Jasper Second Glances by Liobhan Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.   ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Jasper Jones was out late that night, reluctantly hanging around with his local ‘financial advisor’ and currently being shown the back garden of the man’s first floor apartment in what was obviously a high-class neighborhood. They were discussing strategy during the negotiations with several potential investors in the upcoming week, and sizing up their best opportunities, but it was getting dark and cold, not necessarily in that order. Jasper was astonished, though, at how large the ‘garden’ was, the size of an average public park back in Tulsa, where he lived and where his company intended to set up shop, once they got going for real.

The money was the only problem, as there didn’t seem to be much of it around these days, and they’d burned through all the cash they’d wrestled from their first “angel” investors, who’d extracted the lion’s share of the potential profits long before any real money appeared, if ever. ‘It wasn’t fair, God damn it to Hell. We did all the work, supplied one hundred percent of the brains, and they wind up with most of the God-damned cash! Angels, Hell, more like blood-sucking leeches. Sons’a God-damned bitches!’

He tried to pay attention to what his host was saying, something about some bigwig in one of the venture capital companies who might rescue them living in the flat above, whatever the Hell that meant, but he was pointing up at a large picture window overlooking the garden. There were a bunch of broads standing around up there, some with drinks in their hands, talking to each other, laughing, looking out on the garden or in toward the room, all of them dressed nicely, as well as he could judge, and some of them foxes, tens for sure, though most of the others weren’t bad. There were no men visible, and they didn’t look like they were waiting around for any, so he knew what that meant, a bunch of God-damned dykes. He could hear some kind of artsy-fartsy music drifting down, and reckoned they wouldn’t know George Strait or Brad Paisley if either of’em up and bit’em on the ass. He laughed.

His host, Ned Nickerson, ‘And what kind of fairy name was that!’ interrupted his boring monolog.

“Did I say something funny?”

“No, I just thought of something. Go on, this is all important stuff.” ‘Jesus! Look at the tits on that one!’ The owner of those tits was a long, tall Babe-with-a-capital-B standing just above him — he could practically look straight up her snatch — all dolled up in a frilly blue cocktail dress with a plunging neckline, built like a teenage wet dream, posing just for him, pretending not to look. ‘Hot damn! Wouldn’t she just look just fine flat on her back with her legs spread wide.’

“Well, then, as I was saying, Barbara Stephens, whose flat you see above, is the Registered Accountant in charge of financial and fiduciary analysis at AQI, probably your best prospect, so you’d best keep her in mind during negotiations, although you may not actually see her. She’ll be looking over your business plan, and the rest of your paperwork, with a fine tooth comb and a microscope, and she’ll be talking to whomever they assign as your analyst, so you’d best be on your best behaviour and don’t ever succumb to any temptation to puff up your invention and prospects. She’ll be all over you, as you Americans say, like ugly on a toad.”

He scowled, still staring at the Babe in the dress, ‘God damn, she’s a fox and a half.’ “Yeah, yeah. I get it.”

“I’m afraid you don’t,” Ned said impatiently, “AQI, the firm she works for, is rumoured to be in the market for strategic acquisitions, and there aren’t too many firms with ready cash left. Barbara Stephens can make or break you, and she won’t bat an eyelash either way.”

The women had all turned away and he lost sight of the woman in blue, so when he caught Ned, out of the corner of his eye, looking up to see what he’d been looking at, there was no one there, except for one girl with hardly any hair, in some sort of shorts outfit with a bib, who stood there staring at him, her jaw set, and her brows lowered. Her eyes were hard and he had to look away, pretending that he’d been listening to Ned all along. Then the music was suddenly turned up and he could hear a cheer, and clapping, so he looked up again. The hard-eyed woman was gone, but his angel hadn’t come back. Then several of the women started dancing, together, their bodies touching, moving against each other…. He faltered.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Jasper thought. ‘My whole God-damned company depends on some God-damned bull-dagger bitch!’

—««-»»—

After five days, Jasper was a little discouraged, but mostly pissed off. ‘These God-damned faggots couldn’t find their own pansy asses with both hands tied behind their backs.’ He’d gone through his presentation six times, each time haunted by his memories of the woman in the window, the deep cleavage between her ample breasts burned into his brain, the glimpse he’d had of her thighs beneath the skirts of her dress had been like snorting cocaine, a sudden rush of euphoria and energy that hardened his dick like a rock, so stiff it almost hurt, and his need to take this woman was an addiction, creeping around his thoughts like ants, playing out her seduction, or rape, over and over…, not one of ’em had the brains to see how much money their process could save them, not only in energy costs, but added value-offsets of the depolymerized end-products, and elimination of ninety-eight percent of toxic sludge. ‘Assholes!’ Now they were in a cab on the way to AQI, riding through narrow curving streets someplace near the docks, not at all like the big developments they’d passed by that fancy bridge, but in a sort of warehouse/residential neighborhood, with little restaurants and bars and fast food joints tucked into larger, but still moderately-sized buildings. Then they pulled up to a small four-storey building in a jumbled row of roughly similar buildings, with an understated ‘AQI’ in brass over the doorway. ‘For Christ’s sakes! These so-called angels look like they’re living in a God-damned Mary Poppins movie!’ “Is this it?” he said.

Ned seemed a little less sanguine than usual, but not by much, “I know it doesn’t look like much, but AQI don’t believe in flash. They’d rather be making money than spending it. Remember? I told you that they were your best chance.”

Jasper turned on him in anger, his round face going red, almost shouting, “Then why in Hell were you saving them until last? I could’ve saved a God-damned shitload of time by just coming to these people first!”

Ned retained his calm demeanour, impassive, but did twitch the corner of his right eyebrow, “It was my judgement, Mr Jones, that you’d be able to present your best case if you weren’t just off the plane, jet-lagged, and tired. There was a chance, possibly a slim chance, that the other six companies might have been interested, and they were — in my opinion, an opinion for which you’ve paid a great deal of money and of which you’ve taken very little advantage — the least likely to insist on major changes before handing over cash or credit, some of which you probably won’t like at all. AQI will, if they become involved, not only go through your business plan quite thoroughly, changing whatever they don’t fancy, but will examine your company, your staffing, salary scheme, software and technology development process, and the colour of the towels in your tea room with the same jaundiced eye. And unless you keep your sometimes confrontational attitude well in hand, you’ll have even less luck here than you did with the previous six firms. Now what are your plans?”

His face working, scowling, fists clenching, he raised one hand and deliberately slammed it to the seat between them. “Well, let’s have at’em, then. If we’re screwed, might as well find out now.” He threw open the door and got out of the cab, leaving Ned to handle the fare, and walked up the steps to the stoop, where he waited, not very patiently.

When Ned finally finished diddling with the change, he walked up the stairs and said, “Remember, nothing but the absolute truth here, no ‘spin,’ and no excuses. You’re a penitent sinner here, come begging for absolution and alms. This is our last stop, unless you want to try your luck with the Russians or the Chinese, and I don’t think you’re equipped to play in those leagues. I know I’m not.”

Jasper was still fuming, “Yeah, yeah. You’ve harped on this before. I get it; don’t try to sell’em.” He opened the door and barged through.

— ««-»» —

Jasper pursed his lips. He couldn’t control the twitching of his right leg under the conference table and only restrained himself from jumping out of his chair and rushing back out from the room with great difficulty. ‘She was here! He’d seen her in the hall, just a glimpse! Her breasts thrust forward like spears….’ He wondered if this Stephanie Rosen woman was one of those dykes he’d seen at that party the other night, ‘hot bitches sliding up against each other in slinky, girly, clothes.’ He shook his head, he hadn’t been able to get the sight of them out of his mind, the thought of them ‘kissing, hands roving, displaying themselves like that, shameless and wanton, out of control, where anyone could see.’ He could see them, ‘pressed against the glass, leering at him, red silk slipping from firm breasts, lace…, but not his woman, the one in blue, the angel….’ He caught himself losing focus again, “What…, what did you say? I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that….”

The Rosen woman looked at him with eyes like needles, as if she could see his inmost thoughts, the value of his soul, and found both wanting. There was a noticeable pause.

‘Fucking bitch!’ he thought.

“I said that I hoped your flight was tolerable, as none are quite so nice as when the Concorde was still flying, and that your short stay in the City had afforded you at least some spare moments for sightseeing.” She smiled briefly, almost a smirk, the way all these God-damned snooty assholes did.

He shrugged, his face impassive. “I’m not much for sightseeing. I suppose we’ve driven by a few old buildings.”

She smirked again. “Quite right. I’m sure you’ve been very busy.”

‘The women… dancing up there… in that window… far above him… like those whores in Amsterdam… naked… writhing… their arms like snakes… and his blue angel, smiling down like the Blessed Virgin Mary…. Oh, God!’ he gasped, then sighed. She was offering him something, and about time too! “That would be fine.”

She gave him one of those looks again, so he knew…. ‘Her breasts pushing towards him… rising, falling with her gasps…’ “Do… do you have any of those little chocolate cookies I had the other day? They were made by Tekkos, or something like that.”

“Their chocolate biscuit assortment, yes, of course. I think we can come up with something like that.”

She started diddling with an electronic gadget, some sort of messaging device, so it was obvious that she was taking orders from someone higher up. ‘Might as well wait for the real authority, then. No sense dealing with flunkies.’ Jasper was very pleased to have figured out what the score was.

‘Fine lace peeking out from swirling skirts… black stockings between creamy white thighs… smooth skin rising to secret crevices, shadowed creases… swelling breasts, turgid nipples, touching… tongues… her eyes looking straight towards me, then cast down… blue petticoats… her panties blue, still hidden… stockinged legs closing around him… urging… demanding… shameful… ’ He shook himself, realizing that she was going on and on about something again. “I… I just don’t feel comfortable without looking into the research behind the claims outlined in your report, and… and… of course I’ll have to contact Sandip Duranian, our CEO, before signing off on anything.”

She started yammering again, but obviously didn’t understand that their arrangements were already made. He was starting to ‘imagine her legs wrapped around him, open, urgent…’ tightening up again, his blue angel…. ‘What’s happening to me? Concentrate! Dammit! Board! She’d said something about the board. OK. He knew the answer to that one.’ “W…w…we’ve given it some thought and want two of our angel investors at minimum, since that was a condition of their investment, together with some long-time supporters, and George would like a seat on the Board as well.”

She started complaining about their requirements, so he nodded agreeably, perfectly willing to wait until the head honcho arrived, wondering if his Angel was still out there, waiting for him, her arms stretched towards him, yearning, offering everything.

“Yes, of course. I’m sure your Mr. Humphries will have something to say about that as well.”

— ««-»» —

Stephanie Rosen was just about fed up with her latest client, AxSys Engineering, whose CFO was definitely stuck back in the Dark Ages as far as believing that women could be trusted with anything more complex than babies, breakfast, and beauty shops. All he’d seemed interested in thus far had been the third button on her blouse, with furtive glances at her crotch when she’d happened to stand and face him. Normally, she would have brought in a ‘beard’ to decorate the head of the table, but the only bloke available was bloody Allistair (The Alligator) Humphries, and he brought his own set of problems with him that she didn’t want to inflict on the rest of the team, including an inflated salary that she’d always supposed was down to his father being a sodding Peer. Which left her fuming as Mr Jasper (The Jerk) Jones dithered once again, quibbling about her analysis of their position in the market and the best timing of their IPO, based on his own over-inflated opinion of his financial skills, of his firm’s value-added by comparison with other players in the market, and his almost total ignorance of the current state of the world financial marketplace. “We fully understand your concerns, Mr Jones, and have taken them fully into account, but it’s our position that your firm would lose approximately half the potential value of your initial public offer by acting precipitously. You have an excellent ‘green’ process for the initial fractionation of petroleum products, but with the recent elections in the US, the financial crisis, and the precipitous drop in oil prices, the market is still too unsettled to hazard what amounts to the future of your enterprise on what amounts to a roll of the dice.”

Stephanie wasn’t terribly worried about offending this particular idiot, as she had two other prospects waiting in the wings if Jasper didn’t make the grade, but Barb had told her that the potential margins on this one were better, despite the fact that they’d have to buy out the original backers.

He shook himself, as if he’d been asleep. “What…, what did you say? I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that….”

Stephanie stared at him for a moment in disbelief. “I said that I understand your impatience, but we believe the time is ripe for serious governmental actions to mandate carbon emissions reduction across much of North America and Europe, possibly even including China and Japan, and your process will be much more valuable if it solves a legislative requirement than if it merely makes existing processing of crude stocks more efficient when there isn’t that much value to be wrung out of what’s now a depressed price. Our analysis shows that the current low costs are acts of desperation by OPEC and the major oil companies to keep up cash flow during this time of financial crisis, in which they have had to cut production by millions of barrels per day merely to prevent a glut and still lower prices. Our analysts are confident that prices will inevitably rise, even in the short term. Our prediction is that GaiaGen’s process will fail to make any lasting impact in the marketplace, and their premature funding round will diminish their ability to adapt to changing conditions down the road, due to insufficient capitalisation.”

His eyes glazed over, his countenance shut tight, like a clam in the grip of an starfish, but he seemed to have drifted away to Xanadu again. This once, she couldn’t resist rolling her eyes as she tightened her lips in disapproval. Didn’t he understand the importance of this meeting?

After an alarming pause, he finally focused again, looking toward her instead of vaguely elsewhere. “I… I just don’t feel comfortable without looking into the research behind the claims outlined in your report, and… and… of course I’ll have to contact Sandip Duranian, our CEO, before signing off on anything.” He smiled smugly, as if relieved to have discovered a new way to avoid doing anything, much less making a decision on his own.

Stephanie could feel the negotiation deteriorating, He’d had their report for almost a week now, and evidently hadn’t even bothered to look at it. ‘Is he the best they’ve got? Is he ill? Or is it just that he can’t conceive of having a serious discussion with a woman? Damn! It’s down to that preening toff Humphries, then, which will cost my team a chunk of their commissions. What’s the matter with this twit? Hasn’t he a clue?’ She gritted her teeth under cover of a smile and made a note to tack on some costs in the final proposal, to compensate for Allistair the Alligator’s unwelcome presence. Perhaps she could just bill his time at something over the usual rates, now that he was about to be transformed into ‘our resident expert’, and then add on ‘management fees’ to cover his share of commissions. She nodded, that would do it, “Of course, Mr Jones, why don’t we give the Honourable Allistair Humphries a call, then. He’s our particular expert in this field, so he can set your mind at ease. I’ll just see if he can pop round,” she opened her Blackberry and sent a quick text to Humphries, putting him into the picture so he didn’t make too many blunders coming in. “I’m sure he’ll be here in a moment, so why don’t I see about having some refreshments brought in by my secretary.” She could see sweat starting to bead on his upper lip and forehead, and wondered again if he was ill, for a moment, but then noticed the direction of his leering gaze, and dismissed the thought. ‘Wanker!’

“That would be fine,” Jasper said, obviously relieved to have her back in a rôle he understood, the perfect hostess. “Do… do you have any of those little little chocolate cookies I had the other day? They were made by Tekkos, or something like that.?”

‘Bastard,’ she smiled. “Their chocolate biscuit assortment, yes, of course. I think we can come up with something like that.” She sent off another text. “Do you have your prospective Board of Directors set up yet? We’d like to offer input on that as well, since the quality of the board means a lot to institutional investors.”

“W…w…we’ve given it some thought and want two of our angel investors at minimum, since that was a condition of their investment, together with some long-time supporters, and George would like a seat on the Board as well.”

This time, she resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and was almost ready to give up, but had a fiduciary duty to make the firm’s position clear, and she wished he’d stop staring at her boobs, “We strongly advise against any Board members who cannot demonstrate arm’s-length distance from the company itself, as it lays the firm open to claims of self-dealing, and the near certainty of shareholder lawsuits down the road. The regulatory environment for corporations is changing rapidly in the current crisis, and we recommend extreme caution until the situation settles.”

“Yes, of course, he said dismissively, turning to the door, as if to await the cavalry. I’m sure your Mr. Humphries will have something to say about that as well.”

Stephanie could almost see the wheels of his brain slowing down as Jones settled onto his comfort zone, and realised that the Alligator might not be a bad investment after all, since his hypnotic male presence might well make it possible to sell ancillary services that this Jones twit would never have considered without Allistair’s strategic camouflage obscuring her hand up his backside making the Alligator’s lips move on cue. “I’m sure he will,” she said, “and I’m quite sure he’ll add enormously to our discussions.” She smiled with real pleasure for the first time that afternoon, contemplating their new bottom line. For some reason, she suddenly remembered hearing Vera Lynn singing It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow at some sort of VE Day celebration a decade or more past. Catchy lyrics. She’d have to download a copy from iTunes.

— ««-»» —

Later in the day, Mr Jones, his vapours, and his randy cheek, finally packed off with Allistair for a night of carousing, the Alligator’s best and most useful skill, she called Deirdre to discuss the latest developments. “Dierdre, I’m glad you’re still picking up. How’s Scotland?”

Deirdre’s voice had that flat and scratchy cellphone quality, fading sometimes, but not horrible enough to ask her to find a landline. “Cold, wet, and foggy, very cozy for a San Francisco girl. You know Mark Twain once said that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.”

Stephanie laughed, “No, actually, I didn’t know, but I’m sure it’s locally famous. Look here, I’m sorry to interfere with the holiday Barb set you to, but I’m calling about the AxSys IPO and wanted to give you a head’s up, since this is partially your area. I’ve had to bring in Allistair the Alligator to cater to the AxSys CFO’s All-Encompassing Theory of Divine Masculinity, but it will be all right, I think, as I’m raising our fees to compensate for his ‘high level’ supervision of the project, and thus far Allistair’s been letter perfect in his lines, taking my cues with considerable skill, and we’ve managed to increase our billings by almost twenty-five percent, so he’ll pay for himself and then some. I’m afraid I may have underestimated the value of our dear Alligator, even though he’s not actually going to be doing anything for his wages but smiling that toothy smile whilst mouthing my words in those plummy tones and buying drinks and lobsters of the evenings.”

“Allistair? My God, Stephanie, the man’s an ass. At least that’s all I’ve seen of him, mostly passing by in the hall with a customer in tow, gossiping about this or that social event, or who’s sleeping with which Royal scion.”

“But a useful ass. As ambassador to the twit from AxSys he’s found his perfect niche, and I’ve told him he’d best follow my lead or I’d set Barb on him, so not to get cheeky about his faux supervisory position.”

“Well, with both you and Barb on his case, I’m sure he’s quaking in his boots. And I imagine the two of you know best so I’m not bothered.” She paused and then said brightly, “See, I’ve been picking up the local idioms.”

Stephanie laughed, “I noticed. You seem to be developing a slight Scots burr as well, must be the porridge.”

Deirdre played up the accent a little, “Aye, I’ve learnt to stir it clockwise with a spirtle.” and then lapsed back into her West Coast drawl, to Stephanie’s ear somewhat reminiscent of Cornwall, but with no trace of a lilt. “We’ve come to an understanding, Gordon’s mother and I, as we both agree the ‘pur laddie’ needs a lassie to look after him. His father pretty much does as he’s gently told, another rare gem, and thinks I’m ‘bonnie,’ which I gather means something more than merely pretty.”

Stephanie was very pleased. Barb had informed her of her unsubtle matchmaking at the shower, although she herself wouldn’t have had the nerve, but she’d trusted Barb’s judgement and was thankful that it seemed to have done the trick. Deirdre’s attitude had undergone a complete renaissance from her former gloom. In fact, she seemed both relaxed and happy, which was a great weight off Stephanie’s mind. “I take it things are going well, then?”

Deirdre didn’t hesitate at all, “Yes, it is. For me, he’s perfect, uncomplicated and sincere, thoughtful and loving, what we used to call a ‘nice catch’ in school, and I really like his parents. His mother’s a lot like me, but not quite as bold, and his father’s quite a bit like Gordie, I think, fast-forwarded a few decades. When I look at him, and imagine my Gordie at that age, I’m more than moderately happy.”

“How do you think he’d do at AQI?” Stephanie asked. “Did his viva go well? I’ve been thinking of him for quite some time now, based upon Barb’s reports, as his ideas seem charmingly perspicacious and free of preconceived baggage.”

“I think he’d do well, and I suspect he aced his orals. He’s perfectly brilliant, you know, in both the intellectual sense and that peculiar idiom you Brits fancy. We worked together on various lines of inquiry and attack that might come up in the questioning until he was as glib as an aluminum siding salesman. We’ve already solved the energy crisis, improved the exchange rate of the pound, and worked out clever ways to ensure world peace half a dozen times over Cornish cream tea and cakes, and he has some really creative ideas about ways to go forward on global warming without requiring cold fusion in a teacup or a bajillion tons of solar arrays floating around in outer space through the fortuitous intervention of the Atlantean Magi. Common sense combined with visionary prescience is a rare combination. We could use it.”

“Do you think his presence would be distracting or awkward for you in any way?”

Again, she didn’t hesitate, “I don’t. We’re both quite sensible, I think, even if somewhat besotted of late. Of course I couldn’t have him as a direct report, or vice versa down the road, but as co-workers we’d both be fine. We seem to share several passions, not just the one. Please thank Barb for me, and convey my sincere admiration and gratitude. I thought I was a pretty good matchmaker, but she’s the shadchen of the century.”

Stephanie was startled to hear the Yiddish word spoken with such aplomb, and with an accent that might have been envied by anyone at her own synagogue, so she asked, “Deirdre, you’re obviously a woman of hidden depths. Do you also speak Yiddish?”

She laughed, “Oh, God no. I have a bit, because I had a Jewish girlfriend before my father died, but shadchen is originally from a Hebrew term, shidduch, a meeting, and I do know Hebrew. Tell Barb she’s a third of the way to a guaranteed place in the world to come, why don’t you. She might get a kick out of that.”

Now she was astonished, “Is it that serious already? You’ve just met!”

“Stephanie, I may not be the most sentimental woman on the face of the Earth, but I’m enough of a softie that I can recognize my bashert when I trip over him, even if I had to fly halfway around the world to do it. I’m as bold as brass, I admit, but even I don’t drag myself off to meet the parents of a man I met just three days before on a girlish whim.”

Stephanie felt the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end when she suddenly realised that at least three fateful shidduchim had occurred at her shower, Barbara and Mique, herself and Sarah, and now Deirdre and Gordon. “I’m beginning to think there was something in the punch at my shower, Deirdre.”

She laughed, “I don’t think so, although it does seem odd that so many lives were altered so profoundly, especially since two of the ‘meetings’ were between people who already knew each other, but hadn’t quite connected. I think we were all in a state of heightened awareness, partly because of the music Mique played, but mostly because your own startling announcement shook us all out of our habitual pigeonholes, knocked us off our accustomed rails and opened us to new possibilities.”

Stephanie was intrigued by Deirdre’s last words, “ It’s interesting that you speak of being on rails. Oddly enough, I was caught up in the idea of being carried along on a train when I was thinking about my impending marriage. I felt like I was on rails, but then I had an instant of sudden clarity, spoke one sentence, and everything changed. It was Barb and Mique, though, who seem to have been actively working toward bringing people together. I just knew that I wanted to take myself away from a union that no longer attracted me.”

“But without your stunning declaration,” she said, smiling unseen at the other end of the connexion, but Stephanie could hear it in her voice, “Mique would never have played her music and you might not have connected so surprisingly, so rapidly, to Sarah, Barb wouldn’t have seen what she and Mique shared, and they’d probably both still be single, although I did give Mique a tiny nudge in her direction. Without your bold seizure of the process, the shower would’ve been over in an hour or so, as planned, and it would have been hours before Gordon finished his shift at the door. I undoubtedly would have left in the same state I’d arrived in, nerves jangled, never had the chance to meet him properly, gone back to the hotel to sleep, or not sleep, alone, probably quit my job on Monday, moved back to San Francisco to immerse myself in my customary misery, and missed my best shot at real happiness. You yourself might possibly have trundled on down the road to a stint as the second wife of a doctor who wasn’t your bashert, your destiny, much less your zivug rishon, a true life mate, all very predictable and safe, but not what anyone really needed. If you count yourself, and I think you really should, you’re responsible for the marriages, or reasonable equivalent, of three couples who would never have met on that intimate level, utterly without masks, open and naked to each other. It was your courage, not anything else, that put things right again for all of us. As far as I’m permitted to voice an opinion, you ought to have your own place reserved in the world to come by now. And now that I’ve thought of it, I ought to be thanking you as as much as Barbara.”

Stephanie was a little uncomfortable now. It was all too much, too private, and too much like she’d just been feeling. She hesitated, “I’m sure we should all go equal shares then, since all I really did was toss the dice up into the air. It sounds like you had a plan, and I know Barb and Mique each had their own plans.”

It was a moment before Deirdre spoke, but then she declaimed in elaborate cadence, “Ah, Love! could thou and I with Fate conspire · To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire! · Would not we shatter it to bits — and then · Re-mould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire? ·”

She went on in a normal tone, but with a grin plainly audible in her voice, “Omar Khayyám said something like that, probably not quite so pompously, but you actually did it. Destruction is an integral part of and precursor to every act of creation. Shiva, Lord of the Dance, Nataraja, destroys ignorance, inertia, and darkness in order to prepare for full knowledge, initiative, and light in an unending cycle of destruction and rebirth. We six were all of us exquisitely balanced on a knife’s edge, perched between creative bliss and destructive misery, and you held the balance in your hands. You chose life.”

Stephanie swore, “Bloody hell, Dierdre. Are you sure you’re not secretly a Rabbi? You seem to have been channelling the Rambam, Maimonides, just now.”

“Really? Couldn’t prove it by me. I just calls ’em like I sees ’em. Three strikes, yer out. Four balls, you walk. You, my very dear, hit a homer and we all seem to be home safe.”

Stephanie, blinked, then continued with a wry grimace, “I gather that’s some sort of reference to American baseball, but it went completely over my head.”

She laughed wholeheartedly, boldly, with no trace of concealment or repression. “That’s another baseball metaphor and I, on the other hand, think I’m channeling John Lennon,” she began to sing, softly, “All you need is love, love, love is all you need.” and then continued, “But maybe it’s all the same thing, ahavat chinam, unconditional love.”

Stephanie’s head was spinning, “But what’s that have to do with real life? And our customers?” she said crossly. She liked to see the people she was talking to, and this extended telephonic interaction was beginning to irritate her.

“Everything. Gordon and I have discussed this on a superficial level, but I just put it all into context talking to you, a metaphor we can sell. The world is balanced right now on the edge of the abyss, poised precariously between the survival of humanity, and much of the rest of our familiar world, and a long slide into a future which quite likely goes on without us, and without most of what we love about the world we see around us. We have to change, our business models have to change, or the world will change us, willy-nilly. Shiva, the God of destruction, is also, paradoxically, a God of love and protection, manifesting simultaneously in several aspects, often represented with multiple arms. His first pair of hands hold two things. One hand holds the drum, the union of active and passive principles, male and female, which makes the first sound, the primal creative movement and vibration we know now as the ‘Big Bang,’ the slow heartbeat which sustains us. The other hand holds fire, the dissipative heat death which awaits us all until a new heartbeat begins and a new universe is born. The gestures he makes with his second set of hands signify fearlessness and the falling away of barriers. It’s time we took his lesson to heart.”

“I still don’t understand. Your eloquence is all very uplifting, but I still don’t know what it means. What are we supposed to do?”

“We have to make our customers understand that the world is not only in a state of flux, a commonplace of ordinary economics, but that basic paradigms are changing as well, impelled by financial crisis and public anger. We’re in an energy trap, squandering the savings of hundreds of millions of years in a profligate and self-destructive binge. Those businesses which survive will be adapting to a new reality, less centralized and more distributed, since transportation expenditures are part of what’s killing us all. We, and our customers, probably in consort with our governments, have to find ways to monetize the preservation of life, the essential homeostasis of our world, and become part of a new ecology of sustainability, like Shiva, balanced perfectly in the cosmic dance — not rushing forward, about to topple over, tangled in our own feet, and in danger of falling flat on our collective faces. We have to help our customers find that balance, as well as ourselves, and then help save the world.”

Now she was getting cross, “But how is that going to change what they want, which is to make money in exactly the same way they’ve always done? And how are we going to cope? Our procedures and entire organisation are geared up to fulfill a traditional investment banker rôle, but you seem to be asking us to persuade our customers not to use them.”

“Not at all. Our customers will still need our investment services, which have always included strategic planning, but we need to start shifting the focus of those services as the world changes, and as the results of imprudent corporate actions become clearer to the public at large. The time when businesses could use the natural world as a dumping ground is coming to an end. Entire regions are just starting to put a price tag on all forms of pollution, international lawsuits are targeting corruption and gross negligence, and this trend will continue. We need to offer solutions that don’t entail the public relations nightmares that have plagued petrochemical and coal production recently. The scientists now working for environmental groups are just as clever as those working for our clients, so it’s not as hard as it once was to pierce through the fog of deceptive press releases. Honesty is quickly becoming not only the best policy, but the only policy that makes sense any more.”

“And this will save the world how, exactly?” she said sceptically.

“By itself, not at all, but we, and our customers, have to stop passing the buck, ignoring reality, and offering ‘He hit me first’ excuses. Instead of fighting regulations meant to cut emissions, for example, we have to embrace them, insist upon them being given real teeth, with no exceptions made for foreign operations. Anyone who wants to sell into countries with strict standards must meet the regulatory environment of the destination, not the origin.”

“Which guts free trade treaties and agreements.” Stephanie looked at her computer screen, where the ticker tracking a basket of stocks she was covering scrolled slowly, then around her modern office, frowning, and thought, almost seriously, that taking up beekeeping in Devon might not be a bad idea. Then she remembered that the bees were in trouble, these days, and scratched it off her list of things to be nostalgic of.

“Absolutely. Not that it matters all that much, since transport is a major part of the world’s problems, but pollution will eventually become a legitimate casus belli, subject to armed reprisal as a crime against humanity. Many businesses are going to fail, if not soon, then eventually. Others will thrive in the new environment, and we want our clients to be among the survivors. The day is coming when casual pollution, and the pillaging of our common store, will become unsustainable, and unacceptable. The ever popular excuse that we can’t possibly cut emissions, or restore regional ecological systems, because ‘it’s too expensive’ will be viewed as a crime against humanity, against all of life, and the perpetrators punished. The world business regime has been, and frankly, will be for some time yet, stochastic, superficially chaotic, and managed primarily by business mortality, a classic boom and bust cycle, and ‘green’ technology just tacked on like Victoria’s Secret miraculous push-up bras, because the public wants the sexy sizzle.”

Never mind the fact that half our business is selling just that sizzle! She rolled her eyes toward heaven, then spoke, “Are you saying that the economy as a whole is limited, or just parts of it.”

“Parts of it, actually, or all of it at different times and in different situations. Buggy whip makers are still around, but the market is drastically smaller than it was in eighteen-twenty. Solar heating systems, though used in eighteen-twenty, and commented on by Socrates twenty-five hundred years ago, are much more sophisticated and profitable today than they ever were back then. The first solar parabolic trough heat engine was described in 1877 by the Swede, John Ericsson, but is just now becoming practical. Our current business cycles are at least partially artificial, manipulated by several poorly-understood mechanisms — partly because many are illegal, or extralegal — that distort transparency and accountability.”

“And these would be…?” Stephanie was testing the limits of Deirdre’s reasoning now, more interested but still sceptical.

“Some are right out there in the open. There are, for example, extralegal cartels like OPEC, which have a limited power to fix petroleum prices to maximize the profits of its members. Another distortion is manifested in mandated, or subsidized, prices imposed on producers or consumers by many nations around the world — making unprofitable crops profitable or vice versa — as well as corruption — which often goes hand in hand with microeconomic control — and the policies of central banks, which are quite often used to maintain national power or prestige as much as to assure orderly markets. And if you view cultures, or countries, as having periods of ascendency and decline, which they clearly do, there’s an overall arc of wealth and poverty that affects every business conducted within that particular framework.”

Stephanie seized upon the last point, “That sounds suspiciously like Kondratieff Waves to me, which have been soundly discredited by most reputable economists.”

Deirdre said without a moment’s hesitation, “Not at all, or not outside the bounds of reason.”

Deirdre wasn’t at all rattled, which made Stephanie smile with genuine pleasure, congratulating herself over her part in arranging Deirdre’s transfer.

Deirdre continued without a break, “Certainly there are many radical thinkers who feel that Kondratieff made at least a few telling observations, but he made the mistake of seeing the ghost of Malthus everywhere, and forgot that population crashes in a local group of wolves doesn’t mean that eagles and coyotes are similarly discommoded, much less ants or beetles. Kondratieff Waves were as faddish as the Orgone in that sense, despite the latter’s amazing reappearance as ‘Dust’ in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. You can no more discern ‘universal’ or ‘societal’ waves from random economic observations than you can predict the income fluctuations of a casino by studying the takings at a particular roulette table, or decide that you’re having a ‘run of luck’ after three straight passes at craps. Both Malthus, Kondratieff’s intellectual predecessor, and Ricardo, his bête noire, operated within what was essentially a barter economy, largely outside the control of politics, and it’s politics that makes all the difference. Governments, essentially conglomerations of the coercive power of individuals, can force actions that mere economic theory cannot. Say’s Law, and every other economic law, falls away at the point of a gun.”

Stephanie was beginning to see what Deirdre was on about now, not nearly as wild-eyed as it had sounded at first, but what was beginning to look like a closely-reasoned long range business forecast they could run with. She said, her enthusiasm for Deirdre’s outré notions building now, “Just as rationing during world war two limited both non-essential consumption and price gouging, with some exceptions amongst the subset of the civilian population involved in the black market, or the Nazis’ recreation of slave labour helped prop up a failing regime during its extended collapse.”

“Exactly, though eventually all such efforts fail. Our own experience in the USA shows that slave labor can extend the life of marginal enterprises for many years, perhaps centuries, but not forever. Most of the European adventures in Africa collapsed soon after slavery was abolished, so we can see similar examples in recent history, and measure the continuing legacy of resentment and hatred they spawned, all around the world. But even today we see many governments either nationalizing industries at inflated prices, or bailing them out with gifts of public cash, in an attempt to offset corporate gambling losses.”

“Gambling losses?”

“Oh, right, unregulated ‘credit default swaps,’ and other so-called ‘financial’ instruments, a pseudo-market worth perhaps fifty trillions of dollars in the US alone, but which has extended its pernicious influence all around the world.”

Stephanie smiled and said, “Well, I suppose we have to admit that this has had unintended consequences…. But was it gambling or just stupidity?”

“I call to mind the tulip bubble in the Netherlands…, another gaming enterprise infested with swindlers and rampant sharp dealing. To be fair, all enterprises are at least a partial gamble; one estimates the market and takes a risk. If it pans out, you’re a genius and the lion of Wall Street, or whatever, and if it doesn’t you’re a schlub. Pick yourself up and try again.”

“Right then. In any case, I’m not going to do anything of lasting import over the phone, or discuss actual cases in relation to clients, so why don’t you two talk over what sort of offer Gordon might be tempted by, and walk in Monday next with a formal proposal, not, of course, that I mean to interfere with your holiday….”

“Of course not, Stephanie, you’d never think of any such thing. But if I just happened to jot down a few ideas on my days off, you’d be very pleased to look at them. Be prepared to pay Gordon what he’s worth and I’ll do it cheerfully. Not that I’m in any way asking for a quid pro quo….”

She laughed, “Of course not, Deirdre. I’d never think you capable of anything so crassly venal as that.”

“Just so we understand each other. I like you, Stephanie, and I think we’ll be great friends. But we all do work for a living, and so will my Wee Gordie. TTFN, dear. See you soon,” she said, and then rang off.

— ««-»» —

The remainder of the day passed in a blur for Stephanie, as she caught up on paperwork and research. Client visits were a necessary evil, but evil none-the-less, because they always took more time away from doing proper work than seemed warranted, at least on the surface, and it was difficult to appreciate the necessity of marketing after wrestling, not literally, thank God, with a client like Jasper. She made a mental note to thank Allistair for his assistance, which was extremely generous, now that she thought of it. She had, in retrospect, been rather impetuous, even overbearing, in volunteering his services on her behalf. She made another mental note, sadly, not for the first time, to be a little less abrasive in future, and perhaps a tiny bit more patient. Then she set back to work.

— ««-»» —

“Look here, Stephanie, this will never do.”

It was Sarah’s voice behind her, and from the sound of it, she wasn’t at all pleased. Startled, Stephanie twisted around from her laptop to see Sarah standing in her doorway, tapping her foot and dangling the keys to her car, the very picture of wounded impatience. “Bugger! I’ve gone and forgotten the time again, haven’t I?” She could feel the red flush spread up her cheeks, and realised that she must look like she’d just been caught by her mum with her fingers in the biscuit tin. “I’m so very sorry, sweet heart. After dealing with that bloody Jasper all morning, and then half the afternoon, everything just got away with me and….” She broke off lamely, and offered a little self-deprecating grimace and shrug instead. “Forgive me?” She smiled with eyes wide open, then turned and reached out with both hands to key the shutdown sequence.

As the laptop put itself to bed, Sarah walked into the room and stood looking beside the desk as applications closed and eventually the screen went dark. Then she said, “I do, since you didn’t say ‘Just hang on a bit while….’ and go straight back to work. I like to see that your priorities are straight, even if your mind ties itself in knots from time to time.” She moved behind Stephanie and placed her hands on top of her shoulders, “And speaking of knots….” She began kneading the muscles of her back and neck using the flat and heel of her palms to slowly press upon the points of greatest tension. “Let the Alligator have him for a while. He’ll soon have him sorted for you.”

Stephanie squirmed around to look back at Sarah, quite spoiling her little massage. “Allistair? You trust him then?”

“Of course,” Sarah said, laughing. “Why do you think they call him that? Once he gets hold of a client, he never lets go until he’s shaken every quid from from every pocket, and then had a good look to see if his watch might fetch a bob or two.”

Stephanie blinked. “Do you think? But Barb said….”

Sarah gave her hair a little stroke. “Relax, Stephanie. He’s not as bad as Barb makes out, and you’ve never seen him in action. I have. He’s a wonder to behold, all toothy smiles and gentility as he gently offers another round with one hand and hypnotises him with the other.” She made a few Svengali motions with her other hand, fingers waggling. She laughed again. “You are in my power! Dors, ma mignonne!”

Stephanie promptly closed her eyes and said, “I’m in your power and sound asleep,” in a dull monotone. Then she raised one eyelid slightly and peeped out at Sarah from beneath her lowered lid. “Which means, of course, that you’ll have to carry me out to the car park.” Then, she closed her eye again, doing her best to maintain a general air of trance.

“Faker! I saw you peeking!”

Stephanie raised one eye again, this time wider, the other now screwed shut. “Not since last night, as you well know.” She closed her eyes again, but now with a relaxed, but smug, expression on her face.

Sarah laughed. “All right, you win, but I’m not carrying you to the car. I’m using my mesmeric powers to force you to walk under your own power, and you can now sing like an angel besides!”

“There’s them as can…, and them as do,” she said. “Would Mairzey Doats do?”

“Well enough, but we all know it, so let’s not and say we did. We do have the dignity of the firm to uphold, after all.” Sarah struck a dignified pose, shoulders back, head held high, chin out, staring off toward a brighter day like a recruitment poster for the Guides.

“Too right!” Stephanie took her handbag from her lower desk drawer and pointedly left her laptop sitting on the desk. “Shall we go?”

“Yes. And let’s try not to think about work for the rest of the weekend.”

“OK, but first, I’m still confused; what does Barb have against Allistair that she’d say anything that wasn’t true?”

Sarah looked at her with exaggerated pity and shook her head. “Stephanie, Stephanie, Stephanie. You were there. You saw why. She’s never been entirely comfortable around any men, much less a man like Allistair who, for all his faults, p’raps because of them, is very much the lad’s lad. I doubt she said anything completely untrue, but I don’t doubt that she didn’t fully approve of him, or his tactics, however popular he may be back in the USA.”

Stephanie thought about this for a while before the light dawned. “Oh.” She pursed her lips in annoyed chagrin. “So I’ve been wrong about him as as well?”

She shrugged, not particularly bothered one way or the other. “Probably. And I’m very pleased that the word doesn’t stick in your throat. It augurs well for our continued happiness. I’m wrong all the time, and much the better for it. A nice dish of humble pie is good for us, from time to time.”

Stephanie smiled. “Consider it eaten, then, and quite delicious. I should have made my own appraisal.”

Sarah arched an eyebrow in her general direction. “Exactly. Trust the Force, Stephanie.” She took her hand and held it for a few seconds while she looked into her eyes, and and then they both walked through the door and eventually out onto the street, hand in hand, their carefree conversation and laughter as clear and lively as the song of birds.

— ««-»» —

Deirdre called downstairs, where Gordie had been closeted with his father for what had seemed like hours, but she knew must have been more like twenty minutes, “Gordie, are you two done yet? We’ve had a job offer.” She started down the stairs, suddenly reminded of that nervous walk down the stairs from Barbara’s flat, when she’d had the chance to start again with her sweet man.

There was a long silence before the door opened and he walked into the dark wainscotted hall below her, grinning up at her as she descended, “Not in a hurry, are we? What’s the rush? I thought I might take a lucky dip in the Lotto and we’d live off the takings for a year or two.” He caught her up off the bottom stair and kissed her as if he hadn’t seen her for a week, spinning her around and through into the lounge, where his father still sat in his habitual chair, amused.

His father said, with a broad north Highland accent, “Now, Gordie, ye great galoot, dinnae knick the bonnie wee lassie.” and then dropped fluently into something closer to standard English for the rest of his admonition, “ Whatever are you thinking, lad? She’ll think we’re all wild savages up here in the north.”

“Pa, she’d never think that. Why, I’ve explained quite carefully that it’s been simply years since we’ve barbecued a Sassenach to celebrate Hogmanay, and she’s not properly a Sassenach at all.” He’d managed to say this earnestly, but then completely spoiled the effect by glancing toward Deirdre and grinning like a schoolboy.

His father caught the look, and smiled fondly at the two of them. “Aye, not with hair and eyes like hers, dark and bonnie, a true Highlander come home.”

“In more ways than one, sir,” Deirdre said warmly, glancing over toward Gordon, “When my dad died, I came adrift. It’s since I met your son that I found my moorings again. He’s a fine, man, sir, and a tribute to your love for him, the love of his mother, and the strength of your family.”

“Och, weel, hen,” he said, obviously uncomfortable with too many touchy-feely words, “ye’re welcome, then, but call me Conner, or Pa. Sir be ower muckle.”

“Pa, then.” She looked toward Gordie to gauge his reaction.

He waggled both bushy black eyebrows at her, like Groucho Marx in the movies, “You might as well. Ma won’t be happy till we’re married.” He twirled an imaginary moustache and leered.

She was pleased, but not obviously so when she answered, “Gordon Sinclair, is that lame quip supposed to be a proposal?”

He waggled his eyebrows again, still pretending to be Groucho. “More than that, love; it’s a proposition. You have to marry me to make an honest man of me, now you’ve had your wicked way.” He grinned and rolled his eyes back and forth.

Connor was scandalised, “Angus Gordon Sinclair, dinnae play the loun! Whit are ye mollachin aboot? Haud up yir heid like a thistle an ask her. Ye’re lucky she dinnae gie ye the fling, ye daft bampot.”

Looking over to his father, Gordon grimaced, “Pa!” he said plaintively, “Give me half the chance!” He took her shoulders and steered her over to the inglenook, where he encouraged her to sit on the wooden settle through the simple expedient of dropping to one knee while still holding to her shoulders. He looked up at her face with some tenderness, but with the barest hint of a rakish smile besides, “Deirdre Aileen MacLeod, I know you’re twice too good for me, but will you marry me anyway?”

She let him hang for a while, as if considering, before answering, with reluctant modesty, a high lilt in her voice, “Well, I suppose I must, since you’ve asked so nicely, and your mother would never speak to me again if I didn’t, so yes, I will.” She nodded, and then went on in a business-like manner, “I think it should be here, since my mother, and her sister, my aunt Margaret, would quite likely be the only ones to attend from my side of the family. We have some distant cousins somewhere back east, but we never see them, and I’m certainly not going to pay their way, so my mother can invite them if she feels the need, and they can handle their own tickets and lodging.” She turned to Connor, “Pa, could you please tell your good wife that she has liberty to invite whoever she likes, and to make any reasonable arrangements. This is your country, and we’re among your friends and neighbors, so I don’t want to make a scene by insisting on anything that would offend or scandalize any of my new family.”

“Dinnae fash yirsel, lassie. We can heft it from here on. Ye’ll have to be cried o’ the kirk, but I think a month or two would do for the arrangements. We’ll redd everything, as you’re alone here. Your mother and aunt will stay with us, of course, for as long as they’d like beforehand, and after for a wee bit, to feel comfortable wi’us and to get to know the country.”

“Thank you so much, and I’m sure they’ll be very grateful. Would you mind if I borrowed your piano for a wee bit, dear Pa? I have something I’d like to say to my bonnie young man.”

“Not at all,” he said, dropping into something more like BBC English. “It’s always a pleasure to hear it used.”

Deirdre got up from the bench and moved over to the upright piano in the other corner of the lounge, dragging her Gordie behind her by one hand. “It’s a song I’ve always loved, but never found the one I wanted to sing it to. It’s called Answer, by Sarah McLachlan, a woman I’ve always admired.” She sat down and raised the cover from the keyboard, then sat for a few seconds, remembering, before starting the intro, taking her time with the chords. She looked up into Gordie’s eyes, and then sang, “I will be the answer….”

— ««-»» —

Long before the final chord trailed away, tears were streaming down her cheeks, unheeded, and she could no longer see the keyboard; Gordie was just a blur, so she closed her eyes entirely, but her voice was sure and steady, and she could feel his warmth close behind her right shoulder, his breath in her hair.

Into the silence, he whispered, “Deirdre, my heart’s own darling, my dearest angel, you’re worth ten of me.” His voice broke as he said, “I… I love you so much!” and kissed the back of her hair, his rough palm caressing her left cheek, carefully brushing away the tears with his fingertips.

She reached over her shoulder to take his right hand, turned slightly and touched the palm of it with her lips before saying, “Aye, and well I know it.” She looked around. “Where’s Pa?” she said, wondering how he’d disappeared.

Gordie smiled, “I think he thought we’d best be left alone for a bit. It’s not often he’s seen a woman stripped naked by her own hand before him.”

She grinned up at him, eyes still sparkling. “Nice to know I still have the gift. Remind me to shoot myself when I can’t make a grown man speechless.”

He laughed, then grinned. “That I will not. Not that I’ll ever live to see it. You’ll have me worn out and in my grave long before that day!” He leaned down to kiss her lips, and she reached up to meet him.

— ««-»» —

A long few moments passed before they moved from that spot, hearts rapt, arms entwined, and lips hungry for the taste of each other, but at last Deirdre turned her head slightly, breaking the kiss, and sighed. “Oh, Gordie! To think I almost stayed in San Francisco, and didn’t even know my heart would break.”

“No more than mine, cèol mo chridhe. No more than mine. I wasn’t that much of a man before I met you, but you make feel about ten feet tall; I can move mountains now, and stride half a league at one step.”

She gave a merry laugh and used his arm to pull herself up from the piano stool, giving him a little hug before pushing back. “Good. You’ll have no trouble helping me upstairs then. We both have to get back to work on Monday, and I have a few things to do beforehand, so we’d better get cracking.” She hugged him again, harder this time, and gave him a kiss besides, then said, “And now, you daft, bonnie man, we both have to go work on our presentation to the firm and ‘screive it doun.’ Time’s awasting!” She took his hand and led him back upstairs, reaching back to slap his hands when they strayed too near her ass, and then into her room, where her laptop was already on and waiting for her hands on the keys.

He feigned anguished disappointment, copping a feel of her butt as he staggered, pulling her back toward the bed. “What? No celebration?” He threw himself back on the mattress, making the floor shake and the bedposts rattle, half-pulling her down beside him.

She blushed at the noise, knowing what they’d think downstairs, then smiled and extricated herself from his roaming hands, shaking her head as she rolled back off the bed and backed smiling toward the desk again. “Our celebration will be saving the world, or what we can of it. In the meantime, maybe a little nooky from time to time, if you’re a very good boy.” She blew him a kiss and sat down at the writing desk where her laptop waited. “Where do you think we should start?”

The bed creaked behind her as he reluctantly sat up again, “Och, I’d rather start elsewhere, somewhere less cerebral, but I suppose we must, so I think we should begin with the firm. It’s my belief that we’ve allowed them to become too large, too clumsy, and too slow to form an efficient basis for a flexible, rapid-response economy which can quickly take advantage of new technologies.”

She smiled over at him, as he came to stand by her side, admired the line of his heavy jaw, the way she could see the shadows of the jet black hairs that formed his beard beneath his skin, his ruddy complexion, perfectly fitted to the brown-green pastures and low stone walls that surrounded the curiously compact house of his parents, the leaden skies lowering over the Moray Firth just visible through the small window in front of the desk, the wide North Sea beyond, and said simply, “I love the way you think, almost as much as I love you.” She took his hand and kissed his palm, then went back to work.

— ««-»» —

A few hours later, the presentation written and polished, the both of them freshly bathed, and Deirdre in a fresh outfit, they walked downstairs again, then through the hall into the kitchen, where Gordie’s parents were sitting with a cup of tea, both grinning ear to ear as the two of them walked through the door.

Deirdre blushed again, since they obviously knew what all they’d been up to, and said, “Um, it took a little longer than I’d thought. I hope we haven’t held up your meal.” She rolled her eyes over toward Gordie, mutely blaming everything on him, at least for the benefit of his mother.

His mother grinned more widely. “Och, love. Ye need not blame yourself, nor yon feckless laddie. I was young once, and love songs have a long history in the Highlands, often wi’ great effect.” She rose from her seat. “Come back into the lounge and I’ll show you how I won the young man sitting next to me.” She smiled at her husband, then led the way, seating herself at the piano as they all trouped in after, arranging themselves around the room. “This song was written by a young woman of the Western Isles, in the little village of Tong on the Isle of Lewis, a little more than a hundred miles to the west from here. She’d fallen in love with a handsome young fisherman from Uig on the Isle of Skye, and was beside herself from one visit to the next, imagining all sorts of things about him and all the beautiful girls he’d meet on his travels. Well, she wrote this song about him, Fhir a’ Bhàta, or Man o’ the Boat. And here’s the chorus, it’s really easy, even though it’s written in Scots Gaelic o’ the Western Isles.”

She played the chord progression, and then played and sang the melody line for the chorus,

Fhir a’ bhàta, na hó-ro éi-le
Fhir a’ bhàta, na hó-ro éi-le
Fhir a’ bhàta, na hó-ro éi-le
Mo shoraidh slàn dhuit’s gach àit’ an téid thu!

“It means,” she explained, “ ‘O, my boatman, it’s another “horo!” ’ repeated three times, and then she continues ‘and then my blessing wherever you go.’ ‘Horo!’ is just a nautical sort of ‘Ahoy!’ but in Gaelic. It’s really quite a clever song, as she suggests the long time yearning in the three repeated greetings, and then the quick good-bye as he’s off again out to sea after the wee fishies. The rest of the verses are about climbing up the highest hills to look for him, which is a bit of poetic licence, since the tallest hill in Tong is about twenty-five metres, all of eighty feet, and then how miserable she is when she doesn’t see him, followed by her nightmare scenes in which he’s charming all the young ladies with his smooth talking and smiles.”

“Typical man, then.” Deirdre smiled, but then waggled her eyebrows at Gordie, just to let him know that she was onto such tricks.

“Oh, yes. There are lots of verses about the presents he promised her which hadn’t appeared, and all the other fishermen she asks for news of him, who tell her he’s a worthless layabout.”

“So was he? A bum, I mean.”

“Well, he may have been, but he was so taken by the song that he gave up his wicked ways and married the girl a year later. Pretty girls, it turns out, are ten a penny, but a real artist, with true love in her heart, is a rare gem.” Here, she raised an eyebrow towards her son and said, “Pretty boys are much the same, so mind you take good care of this one. She’s far too grand for you, as well you know, and you’d never find another fit to carry the hem of her gown.”

“Ma!” he protested.

“I mean it. Treat her like a queen and you’ll be a happy man the rest of your life. Just ask your father.”

Exasperated, Gordie looked to his father, but found no sympathy there.

“Och, aye, laddie. I’ve never said a word against your mother, and never been sorry for it. Mind you pay attention.”

“I will, Pa. She’s the world to me, as well you both know.”

“And Gordie to me,” Deirdre added. “I’m quite sure of his character, because I see your own. The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree. If I didn’t think he was steadfast and true, I wouldn’t be here today. I’m a shrewd judge of character, and he comes highly recommended.” She smiled and patted his hand complacently.

His mother asked, “So he has a good reputation, then, down in foreign parts?”

“He does. I’m sure he doesn’t puff himself up here at home — he’s not that sort of man — but he’s distinguished himself at university, impressed his tutors, and made a good name for himself at my own firm in a position of modest scope, but great responsibility.”

“Oor ane wee Gordie?” asked his Pa.

“Aye, your own Gordie. So much so, in fact, that he’s quite likely to be offered a position of much greater scope and authority, with a very attractive salary, when we return.”

“So soon?”

“Aye. I’ll be at his side for a bit, until he get’s well on, but he’ll have to pull his own weight soon enough, as I intend to take an extended leave of absence in a year or two.”

“Whatever for?” His mother spoke, but both were mystified.

“I’m still fairly young, but if we’re to have a wee bairn or twa, I’ll have to get cracking sometime soon.” She grinned, then reached to take Gordie’s hand, then looked his mother in the eye. “So you’d best teach me the rest of that song, just in case he needs a little nudge from time to time.”

She smiled. “Shall we do it with four hands, then?”

“I’d be very pleased to.” She pulled up another stool and sat to the left, leaving the melody line to Ma. Shall we begin?

— ««-»» —

Late that afternoon they went out for a stroll, meandering down the small lanes and by-ways toward the sea cliffs of Bodach. Dierdre stopped at the opening in the garden wall and said, “Oh, Gordie, I’ve longed to be near the sea again. This place, these fields, remind me so much of California. The sun’s a bit lower in the sky here, and I’m sure it’s colder in the winter, but being able to inhale sea air, to look out upon the grey ocean horizon, has done wonders for my mood.” Here, she turned and ran off down the road toward the cliffs below Lybster, flying through the soft afternoon light like bold Atalanta, running like the wind, the tips of her ears turning cold in the chill northern air. She stopped and turned to look for Gordie, who was just now setting after her, sprinting down the slight slope down to cliffs and the sea.”

“Deirdre! Hang on a bit,” he called. “As lovely as your backside is, I’m sure I can warm it for you with a little effort!”

She squealed, but not in fright, and turned to run again, drawing ahead, but not too far ahead, until she reached a place where the ways branched. To the right, a lane headed toward the town of Lybster and then down to the harbor, but the straight path carried on toward the cliffs, where she knew from previous walks she would see a small grassy skerry, a rounded sea stack named Ash Geo Mor, if she remembered correctly, and a fringe of similar fractured bits of the land up and down the coast, like the lace edging on a tablecloth, but tumbled into the sea. She turned again and watched until her sturdy man pounded down the path to catch her up again.

He grinned, panting hard, bent over slightly with his hands on his knees. “Bloody Hell, woman…. D’ye tutor rabbits… in sprinting… during your off hours?”

“Only on alternate Sundays.” She laughed and flung out her arms, embracing the Earth, the sea, the sky, and everything. “The rest of the time I exercise only by staying well at the top of my form.” She leaned over to nibble on his ear. “Let me help you catch your breath, since you can’t seem to catch me.” She slid her hand down to stroke his bum. “Getting warm?”

“Keep that up, glykia mou, my sweetie, and I won’t be able to run at all.” He grinned and adjusted his trousers.

Deirdre gave him a little kiss on his lower jaw, since he straightened up, and grinned back. “I’m so sorry, agapi mou, but I plan to keep it up for a good long time to come.” She patted his bum this time, but very fondly. “Let’s go look at the surf eating away at the land.”

He gave her a sly wink. “We’ll be here a long time, then.”

She shrugged. “As long as it takes. I’m in no particular hurry.” She took his hand and walked with him down to the broad sea margin, where they both looked out, far out into grey immensity.

— ««-»» —

“Bethany! Just look at you!” Deirdre smiled as she entered Bethany’s office for the first time. She was assigned to the hi-tech side of the firm, so their paths had rarely crossed, except in the lunchroom, before they really met at Stephanie’s shower. The room looked just like her, subtly, but none-the-less extravagantly feminine in tiny details added to the generic decor. “The old stories are right, there’s a glow about you. You look wonderful!”

Bethany laughed and said, “In the mornings, I usually feel like a dog’s breakfast, but the feeling goes away after a digestive biscuit or two, and then I feel fine.”

“I hear you’re leaving us.”

Her face fell a bit, then changed to an expression of resolve as she nodded. “Yes, and in some ways I’m very sorry to go. I think you and your young man will make this place… interesting in many ways, but that silly git from America has been making me uncomfortable of late, and my baby comes first. I’d planned to work out my full notice, but I’ll be off Friday next.”

“What’s the matter with him? Just a jerk? Or grotty?”

Bethany made a wry face. “Halfway to creepy. He’s taken to sending me anonymous gifts of jewellery and flowers, but of course everyone knows whom they’re from.”

“Barb will sort him out for you,” she said with confidence. “I know she likes you, and she’s never seemed the type to let money stand in the way of doing what’s right by her friends. She’s complained about him to me already, and I can’t imagine how you stand him at all, if he’s made you his special project.”

“Oh, I’m not quite that bothered. I’m dating a copper these days, through Barb’s kind introduction, so I could have him paid a little visit if he gets completely out of hand, and I’m quite used to men whose tongues fall out of their mouths when they see these things.” She gestured vaguely toward her front before rolling her eyes toward the heavens in wry complaint and amused acceptance of the way things were in life.

Deirdre nodded, sympathizing. “What are you going to do?”

“Exactly.” She shrugged. “If not now, when? If not him, the next one will be the same.” Then she brightened. “At least I don’t have to even pretend to like him, since the pathetic tosser doesn’t even sign his name. And I’ve been accumulating simply bags of earrings, rings, bangles, and necklaces, all in matched sets. I feel something like Melina Mercouri in Topkapi, so I’m just waiting for the daft twit to let in the damned bird.” She smiled.

Deirdre laughed out loud. “As long as you aren’t caught with the rest of them, you’ll be alright. He does remind me of that guy Peter Ustinov played, what’s his face? Arthur! Arthur Simpson, the small-time crook and all-round nebbish.”

“That’s him. One good thing, he’s stopped being so mean to everyone since I told him to stop playing the lad or I’d give him a proper jobation.”

“You didn’t!” Deirdre was far from scandalized, but rather admired her nerve. Not many women would scold a customer.

“I did. He usually scuttles out of the way whenever I draw near, but I cornered him at the copiers and told him quite forcefully that his behaviour and deportment left much to be desired. I was obviously destined to be the stern Headmistress of some school for unruly boys, as he’s been quite meek as a lamb ever since, at least by comparison to what he was before, and I didn’t have to cane him at all. Not that I would have wanted to, of course; I had the impression he would have liked it rather too much.”

“Eeew!” Deirdre made a face.

“Indeed.” Bethany set her lips in a thin line and rolled her eyes slightly.

“Stephanie despises him. I know that. I’m surprised she puts up with him.”

“Barb’s not too pleased with him, either. He’s much easier to handle now we have Allistair squiring him around, but he’s still a handful.”

“Well, you have my complete sympathy, and of course an unshakeable alibi should we decide to push him under a bus.” She rolled her eyes and put the tip of her tongue in her cheek to let Bethany know that she was joking.

Bethany laughed. “I appreciate it, but if worse came to worst, a proper hiding would set him right. I’m quite sure I saw a little coppice of limber hazel on my way in this morning.”

“That’s the ticket, and much less messy than busses. I’ll help. We’ll make the little worm squeal. Oh! Darn! I forgot to pack my black leather bustier and whip.” She laughed.

Bethany laughed merrily. “Exactly my own problem.” She paused. “Men!” she said forcefully. “You can’t live with them, but you can’t poison their tea.” She started to rise. “And now, if you’ll pardon me, I have to visit the facility. I’m sure it’s probably my imagination, but I seem to be able to feel it already.” She’d taken her purse from a lower desk drawer and was on her feet already, moving toward the door.

“I’ll walk out with you,” she said as she followed her out into the hall. “I have to be ready for a long meeting with Barbara at ten.”

“Oh, good. We can chat a bit more, then.”

Deirdre lowered her voice and almost whispered as they strolled down the hall. “So tell me, what’s it like?”

Bethany turned slightly and touched her arm as they walked. “My dear, you wouldn’t believe how good it feels….” Her voice was quiet, but her shining eyes shouted her joy to the world.

— ««-»» —

When Deirdre finally walked into her office, she found a note on her desk requesting her attendance at a meeting in Allistair’s office. Puzzled, she walked down the hall to find him waiting in an office so firmly masculine that she was almost surprised not to see one of those fitness machines in the corner, except that would be tacky, and this man was anything but. The walls were discreetly decorated by pictures of Allistair in the company of rich and famous men, and a few women, a few athletic awards, as well as his framed diploma, which she now saw was an engineering degree in nanotechnology, a Philosophiæ Doctor from the Universitas Cantabrigiensis, in Latin, with honours. ‘Oh, shit.’ She wondered whether she should be nervous.

He smiled pleasantly. “Good morning, Deirdre. Would you mind closing the door? I know we haven’t been properly introduced, but I wanted to meet you informally before we became confused by the pressures of an ongoing negotiation. How was your holiday in bonnie Scotland?”

She blinked. “It was very nice, thank you.” This wasn’t the fawning toadie she’d seen in the hall. Standing here before him, she could see the signs of what was obviously a formidable intellect, which made her wonder why she hadn’t seen that before — other than her exhaustion and depression, which was no excuse at all. She went to his desk and sat down in one of the two guest chairs.

Allistair nodded pleasantly. “I’m so very pleased to hear it. I was quite concerned, before you left, by your obvious stress. Let me assure you that we’re not half as bad as people say we are, although I understand that you’ve become quite fond of at least one of us. How is your young man? I understand he’s coming in to see us tomorrow.”

She was startled to learn that he had been aware of and had kept track of her welfare. This wasn’t the self-centered twit who had been described to her. “Yes. He has an appointment with Stephanie, and then another with Barb, tomorrow afternoon.”

“Very good. I’m quite sure he’ll do splendidly.” He smiled and nodded.

He seemed genuinely satisfied, which surprised her. She was obviously going to have to re-evaluate all her first impressions of the man and was well on her way to simply tossing them aside and starting over. “I think so too, but thank you for your confidence and evident good wishes. But I should also apologize for my failure to make your acquaintance before. It’s not like me, and I can only plead my feeling of being overwhelmed by my new surroundings and jet lag as a poor excuse.”

He said, smiling, “Actually, Deirdre, you needn’t apologise. You’d fallen in amongst the faction that dislike me, so your attitudes and behaviour were undoubtedly affected by your immediate superiors. I’m not such a twit as many of my co-workers believe, gulled, I flatter myself, by my upper-class accent and disarming manners. It’s an air and an opinion I cultivate. We’re all of us, we Brits, parodies of ourselves on some level, deliberately mimicking the plumage and birdsong of our own, or other classes, to make particular points. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

Deirdre nodded. “Umm,” she said, noncommittally.

He turned his head away very slightly, but still looking straight at her with his eyes askance. The corners of his mouth twitched briefly and he raised one eyebrow before he continued, “A large part of my value to the firm is my pedigree, my illustrious ancestors, the fact that my father’s a bloody Earl, the schools and university I attended, and the way I talk and carry myself, just as no small part of your own value is your physical beauty and lively intelligence. While it’s possible that I, and you, would have been taken on due solely to our brilliant scholarship, extensive experience, and formidable expertise in our respective fields, the real point is that we deal with the ‘beautiful people’ every day, or those who are in awe of them, and we all have to ‘fit in.’ ”

Deirdre felt a sudden rush of sympathy for the man. “I know exactly what you mean. I interviewed with a dozen firms before this one, and felt like a rack of lamb in the butcher shop at every one, until I stumbled across AQI.”

“I thought you might. But even here we don’t completely escape the exigencies of marketing, as opposed to sound management analysis and technical prowess. In other words, when the situation calls for an upper-class twit, I’m available, and a very useful camouflage it is at times. You too will attract, and distract, a certain type of client, and we can both expect to be trotted out from time to time to demonstrate the depth of our little stable, our fine breeding lines, and general deportment, as much as for our brains. I’m sure you’ve heard the somewhat jocular expression, a ‘dog and pony show,’ used to describe client presentations, but it’s not only because of the ‘tricks’ we perform or the ‘hoops’ we jump through. A large part of the show is simply how we look, spruced up, shoes polished, ‘sincere’ smiles upon our lips, and offering an almost always false assurance of real friendship and intimacy, prick-teases all.” He made a little kissing moue.

Deirdre had to think about this for a while, trying to reconcile the man’s usual appearance and speech with the shrewd appraisal she’d just heard, “Fair enough, I can see I’ve wildly underestimated you.” She gave him a sceptical look, head slightly back and eyebrows furrowed. “But could you explain to me exactly why they call you ‘Alligator’ when you’re not looking?”

He laughed with open humour, right from the belly, his head thrown back and his body shaking, as opposed to his usual constrained twitter, “I quite like you already! Stout heart! And saucy too!” He gave her an appraising look, then nodded his evident approval. “Well, it’s not that much of a secret, and some very few call me that to my face, and with respect. It’s partly down to the healthy hatred the British public have for the Peerage, partly a reference to my somewhat prominent overbite, but mostly an alliterative play on my Christian name set off by analogy against the Lewis Carroll poem in Alice, ‘How doth the little crocodile….’ I’m sure you’ve heard it:”

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!
How cheerfully he seems to grin
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!

He grinned quite unselfconsciously, showing his protruding teeth, then made a show of modest deference, “I believe, on the whole, that this may ultimately refer to the fact that I’m known within some circles of the firm as a genial but ruthless sales agent and negotiator,” his eyes glittered and his glance turned predatory, “and I never leave money on the table.” Then he laughed, which quite spoilt the effect.

Deirdre smiled. “I see now that my judgement was clouded far more than I’d thought. I begin to think that I shall quite like you as well, but to what do I owe the honor of this perilous audience with the ruthless ‘Alligator?’ ” She smiled again to reflect her new appreciation.

His face took on a look of genuine concern. “Not to put too fine a point on it, I wanted to talk to you about Jasper Jones, and perhaps elicit your help with him.”

“Me? How can I help? I don’t even know the man. Oh, I’ve heard about him, even up in the wilds of Caithness, but he sounds like a fool, from all reports anyway.”

He nodded, his face still grave. “I thought so, too, at first, but I’ve become convinced that something profound happened to him that changed him for the worse.” He paused a moment to reconsider his last words. “Mind you, he probably wasn’t a great prize to begin with.”

She was curious now. “Why do you think that?”

He lowered his voice, despite the fact that his office door was shut. “Because in my conversations with him, and my investigation of his background, I see what used to be an apparently competent financial officer who has lost his bearings completely, who is now… how shall I put it…, transmogrified… into a sort of evil twin.” He paused, his brow furrowed, and then added, shaking his head as he did so, “Evil is too strong a word. Not evil, then, but… almost schizophrenic, his highs and lows amplified to the point that he can barely function.”

She raised an eyebrow quizzically. “Highs? I’ve heard about the lows.”

“Yes, indeed.” He nodded once, almost imperceptibly. “Even in his cups, and in vino veritas, as they say, he’ll alternate the most disgusting and graphic imagery concerning women’s bodies, and then follow it immediately with the most exalted, almost poetic descriptions of what he calls his ‘angel’, who is immaculate, yet whom he desires with all the power of his inarticulate love.”

“You mean Bethany,” she said.

He hesitated only very slightly before saying, “I believe so, yes.”

Her eyes narrowed, she said, “And exactly why do you feel sorry for him?” She frowned with deep suspicion.

“I believe Mr Jones, our client, is a broken man. He’s seen his airy dreams of instant wealth shredded to ragged tatters, and is obsessively fixated on a woman he saw at Stephanie’s bridal shower. As far as I can decipher from his rambling maunderings, the object of his adoration is Bethany, my own invaluable analyst who will soon be a lady of leisure, having fallen pregnant and handed in her notice.”

“But how can he have seen her at the shower?” she protested. “There were no men invited, much less a new customer.”

“It seems that his financial consultant in London, Ned Nickerson, whom I believe you may have heard of, or not, makes no matter, lives in the same block of flats Barb lives in, and he saw her through Barb’s garden window, as numinous, to him at least, as Bernadette’s vision at Lourdes. To Jasper, that window has taken on all the significance of Dante’s visions of both Paradise and the Inferno, with Bethany standing in, perhaps, for Beatrice, and all the rest of us, the damned in Hell.”

“We, the damned?” She blinked.

Here he cleared his throat, audibly miming a refined discretion, “Evidently he saw at least some of the women dancing together which, being the benighted inhabitant of the smugly religious backwaters of the USA that he is, he immediately equated with the most grotesque debauchery imaginable, and this waking nightmare of lascivious lesbian licentiousness has apparently occupied every conscious moment since, ameliorated only by the holy apparition of Bethany, to whom he simultaneously attributes a holy sanctity beyond imagination and a depraved desire to indulge in wicked and specific acts of concupiscent carnality with, if you can imagine, Jasper himself. He believes, in his dubious defence, that these lecherous urges and his crude delusions are inspired by Satan, and that he himself is a depraved sinner, since Satan would otherwise have no power over him.” He rolled his eyes with considerable eloquence.

Deirdre was dumbfounded. Intellectually, she knew there were such things, but in San Francisco, among her circle of friends and acquaintances, this sort of credulous piety was unheard of. “In this day and age?” she asked, but even as she said it, her words seemed silly to her. ‘Of course it would be in this age, the age of scientific exploration and opening our collective consciousness to the astonishing grandeur and immensity of the universe, that some people would want to slam the door and hide under the covers.’ “What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?” she said with a sour grimace.

Allistair smiled, instantly picking up on her subtle irony. “It does seem a trifle arrogant, doesn’t it?” He spoke again, with a hint of bombast, flinging up one hand to heaven, “I can call spirits from the vasty deep!” He looked around with seeming hope, then lowered his hand with a sigh.

Deirdre laughed. “Why so can I, and so can any man, but will they come, when you do call for them?”

He grinned boyishly, which was oddly charming in him. “Not recently, alas, but I’ve my fingers crossed.” He held up his hand to show her.

“Oh, good then. I’ll loan you my lucky rabbit’s foot and you’ll be all set. In the temporary absence of magical powers, though, what am I supposed to do about Jasper?”

He hesitated for several seconds, obviously thinking through his alternatives, many of which he didn’t particularly like, at least to judge by the expressions which flickered across his face, before he finally spoke, “I’m not exactly sure. Quite frankly, I’d hoped that your own feminine intuition and skills might help. The situation is delicate, since I’m the head of another department entirely, on part-time secondment to Stephanie, entirely voluntary on my part, let me assure you, and nominally the project supervisor, at least as far as the customer is concerned, but Bethany is my report, and it’s Stephanie’s client whose conduct borders on harassment, so I haven’t a clue.”

“Oh.” She blinked. She was too taken aback by his frank admission to think about calling him on his sexist stereotyping, but then realised that he was probably right, at least in his appraisal of her skills. ‘If it’s true, is it a stereotype, or just an accurate observation?’ She said, cautiously, “I can see how that might be a little awkward. If you complain formally, then you’re undercutting Stephanie’s relationship with her customer, which might conceivably be seen as covert sabotage in retaliation for her cavalier shanghaiing of your services for her project. Not to mention that Stephanie’s sharp dealing places the firm itself in an untenable position if any official reportage is compiled. Oh, what a tangled web we weave…”

Relief flooded his face. “Oh, good! I knew I was right to confide in you. I don’t want to make this any sort of official complaint, and I think the Earth of Stephanie, but I want Bethany to feel protected and safe. Despite my reputation, I’m something of an athlete, and my natural inclination, I’m afraid, is to punch the gormless little git on the nose.” He laughed sharply, but his jaw was set in anger.

She nodded her reassurance. “It’s not going to be a huge problem, I imagine. I’ll think of something.” She thought for a moment. “And it’s always nice to know that one’s boss sails a little close to the wind at times.” She waggled one eyebrow with a sidelong glance at Allistair to show she wasn’t bothered by the idea, just attentive to detail.

Allistair shrugged. “It’s not a secret. We’re all of us issued pirate hats and cutlasses when we sign on, or hasn’t your outfit arrived yet?”

“Not yet. I’ll be sure to give Human Resources a call. Don’t worry about Jasper, though. Men are my speciality.”

Allistair smiled, something like a crocodile.

Deirdre smiled back.

— ««-»» —

Bethany felt, rather than saw, Jasper staring at her with that pathetic look of his as she walked back toward her office. She whirled about and confronted him, moving to where he had his head peeking out of the conference room. “What are you on about then? Never seen a woman before?”

To her surprise, he blushed and stammered, trying to speak, but without success, until he managed a squeaked, “I… I… I saw you!” Then his face was filled with panic, and he tried to back away without taking his eyes from her face, promptly tripping over a chair, whereupon he fell, but somehow managed not to look away, even when his head banged into the corner of the table, winding up flat on his arse, but twisted halfway under the table. Tears rolled down his face, which was contorted with… lust…? self-loathing…? worship.

For some reason, her heart was moved to pity, and her anger melted into compassion. She said gently, “Poor Jasper, you’re having a hard time of it, aren’t you?”

After a long pause, lips trembling as he tried to speak, he sobbed and choked out, “I… I can’t help myself.” and then began to cry in earnest, shoulders shaking, eyes squeezed tight, until he flung up one hand to cover them, still weeping, gasping for breath as he bowed his head and slid slowly prostrate on the floor, face pressed to the carpet, still sobbing.

She stood for a minute or two, until his sobbing had subsided somewhat, and then knelt down beside him, placed her hand on the back of his neck, soothing him, and crooned, “There, there, dear, we’ll soon get you sorted. Do you think you can stand now?” She waited patiently for his breathing to become regular, still stroking the back of his neck and shoulders, then touched his arm, encouraging him to scoot out from beneath the table. “That’s my good boy! Now let’s get you up and you can follow me to my office, where we’ll get you tidied up and businesslike again.”

As he squirmed out into the open, he tried to hide his face as he struggled to his feet with her limited assistance. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m not like this!”

She laughed, but not in a mean way. “Oh, my dear, we’re none of us what we’re like all the time. Sometimes we can’t help ourselves, and we must just make the best of it, you’ll see.” She encouraged him to stand up straighter by shifting the lapels of his blue business suit, giving them a little shake with the ostensible purpose of settling them properly, but really to force him to straighten his spine to resist her manipulations. It worked.

He reached up to adjust his tie, then brushed back his hair into some semblance of order, on his own two feet again and relatively calm. “Thank you so much! I don’t deserve your kindness.” He began to hang his head again, but she stopped him with her hand under his jaw.

“Buck up. You’ll soon be feeling better, and our thoughts, thank God, are matters for ourselves alone. I certainly won’t hold them against you, or think less of you for succumbing to an irresistible impulse to dwell upon unproductive thoughts, as long as you don’t act on them. You haven’t, have you?”

He shook his head slowly from side to side, “No. But they were so powerful. I could hardly resist them. I… I can’t even now. They’re starting up again, inside my head.” He tried to turn away, but she took him by both shoulders and forced him to look at her directly.

“We must face our fears, as well as our desires, but not give in to them. Now let me check the hall. It’s usually quiet, but one never knows.” She let go of his shoulders and went to the door, then through, looking both ways, beckoning to him when she’d finished her reconnoitre. “Come on, then. Follow me.” She started down the hall, leaving him to follow or not, as he would.

With only a slight hesitation, he walked out behind her, speeding slightly to catch up as she strode purposefully down the hall, turning through an open door into her office. He followed her inside, after a slight hesitation.

She turned and gestured toward her antique camelback sofa in dark red velvet, saying, “Have a seat. I’ll bring you a glass of water directly.” She opened a small frige tucked beside the credenza behind her desk, reached in, removed a small bottle of San Pellegrino sparkling water and twisted off the cap, then took a tumbler from the tray on top of the sideboard, and poured out the bottle, tipping the glass slightly with a restrained elegance of motion that she could tell fascinated the still somewhat abashed Mr Jones.

“While at university, I worked as a publican for a time.” She grinned in explanation. “Such skills are universally admired, as the customer wants what you’re selling, and doesn’t have to be talked into buying. Similar virtuosity on the part of a car salesperson arouses instant suspicion, but everyone likes a talented barmaid. If I only had maraschino cherries, I could manage a proper finish.” She walked over and handed him the glass, which he took and drank greedily. She sympathised. She’d worn herself out crying more than a few times. She walked back to the fridge, shutting her office door as she passed it, and took out some ice cubes and a plastic bottled still water from Tesco’s, opened the top, and poured it into an empty ice bucket, dumped in the ice cubes, and then submerged a cloth serviette for a moment, wrung it out, then carried it back to him. “Lean back against the arm and put up your feet.” She waited until he complied. “Here. Put this over your eyes and just relax.” Again, he complied. She turned back to her desk and turned on her music system. Alison Crowe, singing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah filled the room with soft music.

She waited patiently through the entire song, and then selected another playlist, then moved back to kneel by his side and place one hand on his forehead with a feather touch. She spoke quietly. “Jasper, you just rest for a bit, and I’ll go let people know that you’re feeling poorly and are just having a liedown. OK?”

He started to stir.

Bethany spoke firmly, moving her fingertips to press gently at the distal corners of his supraorbital processes, her thumbs resting on his glabella, the Ajna Chakra, the third eye, seat of the soul. She whispered, “No, Jasper. You rest now…, because you desperately need to rest and be still. You’ve been having a terrible experience, and I think I can help you.” She transitioned smoothly to a low murmur, “ You stay where you are and I’ll sort all this on your behalf.”

He settled back again, the cool cloth still covering his eyes, as the intro to the Il dolce suono aria from by Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, followed her out the door and through to the corridor until she swung the door swung shut behind her.

At once a hush descended on her, a whisper of office noise still present, but muted by the thick carpeting in the hall and the heavy panelled walls. She walked toward the front of the building, where the petroleum industries analysts had their little section. She knocked on Stephanie’s door, which was shut.

From within, Stephanie’s voice called out, slightly muffled but audible, “Come in?”

She opened the door and leaned in, seeing Stephanie and Dierdre in conference. “Oh! Hi, Deirdre. Hi, Stephanie. Please excuse the interruption, but I’ve just popped by to tender Mr Jones’ temporary regrets. He’s feeling rather poorly and is lying down in my office until he recuperates, so he probably won’t be able to attend the afternoon session.”

There was a flurry of motion as both women twisted to fully face the door. Stephanie quickly said, “Bethany! Deirdre was just telling me….”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, Steph, but I’ll have to get back. I’m afraid the poor man may do himself a mischief if he’s left alone to brood for any length of time.” With that, she backed out, shutting the door behind her, and walked back down the hall.

— ««-»» —

Bethany opened her office door slowly, so as not to disturb Jasper, but then breathed a little sigh of relief when she saw that he seemed to be sleeping, his mouth slightly open, but not, thank heavens, snoring. Maria Callas was singing the final portion of Regnava nel silenzio, her voice dark and haunting as she moved to her desk and began to work on some of her backlog of correspondence and reports. She left the music playing softly in the background to help cover up the clicking made by her hands on the keyboard. Next up was Barbara Bonney singing Schubert’s Ave Maria, a pæan to womanhood that had always attracted her for some reason she’d never been fully conscious of.

She’d managed to get quite a bit done before he stirred, a slight change in his breathing heralding a change in his consciousness, so she lost no time in standing up from her desk and moving quickly to his side. She knelt, reaching out both hands as she bent over him to first take the cloth from his eyes and then take his head and neck gently between her two hands, her slender fingers reaching back to make simultaneous contact with the external occipital protuberances at the base of his skull, her concentration and perception reaching through the thin flesh deep into the bone. She let the pressure increase gradually, almost imperceptibly, until she felt the blockage in the flow of energy, moving slightly until she felt the perfect point on which to balance his mind and body, letting them lean against her strength and settle into new patterns, reaching out for his own perfect self. She spoke aloud, but very softly, “Before I became a publican, I worked as a registered massage therapist and bodyworker, so you can trust me. You do trust me, don’t you, Jasper?”

He answered without hesitation or fear, resting quietly, arms resting, palms up, at his side, eyes shut, his throat exposed and open, “Yes.”

She moved her fingers down to explore his neck and spine, testing each nexus of energy and movement. She said kindly, her heart and voice both filled with compassion, “You haven’t had much luck with women in your life, have you, Jasper? Why do you suppose that is?”

His eyelids fluttered for an instant and his breathing quickened, then he sighed, “I don’t know.” He relaxed again, even more completely, sinking into his perfect self as her fingers teased out the threads of his confusion.

She moved her hands down to his shoulder blades, improvising, the movements slightly awkward, or at least changed, from what her normal interaction with a client on a massage table would have been. “I think you do know, Jasper, deep inside yourself, and you can access that knowledge if you allow it to rise to the surface.” This time she reached for his breastbone, the gladiolus, the short sword, below his throat and approaching his heart as she felt her way along the obstructions within his body, leaning in slightly and holding where she felt weakness and imbalance until she reached the sternum and the xiphoid process, that decorative cartilaginous and flexible serif to the line of bones that covered his beating heart, now encompassed within her grasp, gradually ossifying into total rigidity. She leaned in to support him in his inner struggle.

His eyelids fluttered and he took a deep breath, then sighed, and his breathing changed. “I’ve never really liked women,” he blurted out.

With infinite kindness and compassion, supported by Jasper’s perfection and strength, just as she supported him, she said, “There’s nothing wrong with that, Jasper. Your inner self is perfect and reaches out for love. Your heart, your soul, is unbroken and exquisitely perfect, shining with light and love and life.”

“I’ve never trusted women….” He paused for another deep breath, then said, “But I trust you.” Tears brimmed at his eyelids, then trickled down toward his ears.

She smiled down at him in total honesty. “In the subtle perceptions of our true hearts, there are no disguises, for we see each other’s souls. There is no concealment possible when our eyes are truly open. What you saw was true.”

His eyes opened, searched her face. “But you’re pregnant!”

She smiled, then laughed in joy. Tears brimmed at her own eyes as she said, smiling, “Yes, I’m pregnant, and thrilled to be. I’d never thought it possible, however much I’d longed for a baby of my own.” Her fingers had never stopped searching for and finding tipping points, but now she reached out and took both his hands, applying gentle traction to loosen his shoulder joints, tight and painful from where he’d been labouring under a heavy burden.

His eyes wide open, he said in wonderment, “Then I was right; you were touched by God.” A look of pure joy suffused his face, and she could feel his strength and joy in the energy streaming down his arms. “You were my angel.”

She smiled again, and then said kindly, “Nothing quite so grand, but who am I to argue? Perhaps we’re all angels, if we took the time to look carefully.” She reached down again to take his head, her fingers feeling once more for the prominence at the base of his skull, then leaning into coursing energy, slowly withdrawing as he stared into her open eyes.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Ave Maria sung by Radu Marian, male soprano, had just begun to play.

— ««-»» —

Jasper was walking down Southwest Park Road under the trees in what looked like a nondescript residential apartment neighborhood. He was humming the tune to a Gospel song he’d loved when he was younger. Then, from an open upstairs window, he heard a few bars of the Hallelujah song Bethany had played for him, which he took as a good omen, although the woman singing was different. He continued on with a lighter heart, if that were possible, still humming. Eventually, the signs on the buildings changed to say The Grange Road and he had to cross a branching street. A Black kid with a ghetto-blaster was lounging on the corner underneath the shade of a tree, his music segueing incongruously from a disco beat pounding out ‘If you want to be a macho man’ to an orchestral piece with lyrics that started, ‘It’s a bittersweet symphony.’ A huge two-story red bus spewing diesel fumes roared by on his left. He could feel and smell the rush of stinking air it left in its wake. To his right, he saw what looked like a small neighborhood grocery store ahead, then there were two Chinese fast food places, distinguishable only by their names and the colors of the paint on the storefronts, one red, one white, but with a light blue sign.

Then he saw it, a shabby low brick building painted black and blue. A prominent black sign, with white lettering, proclaimed ‘THE FORT.’ There was a bus stop right outside. ‘How handy for a bar,’ he thought.

As he looked around, he noticed what looked like a health clinic on the other side of the street. ‘Even more. Get drunk, take the bus home. Get into a brawl, cross the street for a bandaid and some iodine. Get hungry, there’s two kinds of Chinese right up the block.’ He idly wondered if they shared a kitchen, or maybe they were bitter rivals, competing for customers with special offers, leaflets shoved under doors, and coupons in the local shopper.

He turned back toward the bar. There were two doors, so he chose the nearest one and tried the handle. It was locked. Unperturbed, he walked over and tried the other. It was locked too, so he knocked. There was movement inside, so he knocked again, louder this time, in case they hadn’t heard. He heard movement again, then footsteps approaching the door.

A deep voice shouted out from behind the door, “Gerout! Can’t you see we’re closed! Come back at eight! Or tomorrow; we’re open at two then.”

“Excuse me, I just had a question.”

The door opened, and a huge bull of a man appeared in the doorway. “Well, out with it then.” He glared at him, made more intimidating by the tight leather pants and straps that clung to his half-naked body. He was wearing heavy motorcycle boots and a peaked leather hat, just like Brando wore in The Wild Bunch. Strangely, Brad Paisley was playing softly from somewhere inside, When I Get Where I’m Going, the first time he’d heard something from home since he’d been here.

Smiling, Jasper opened his mouth to speak.

—««-»»—

Stephanie’s Playlist

1. It’s a Lovely Day Tomorrow by Vera Lynn

2. All You Need is Love by John Lennon (Magical Mystery Tour - US Release - by The Beatles)

3. Ave Maria by Radu Marian, male soprano (J.S. Bach)

— ««-»» —

Bethany’s Playlist

1. Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen) by Alison Crowe (live)

2. Lucia di Lammermoor - il dolce suono (Donizetti) by Vitas

3. Lucia di Lammermoor - Regnava nel silenzio (Donizetti) by Maria Callas (live)

4. Ave Maria by Barbara Bonney (Schubert)

5. Ave Maria by Radu Marian, male soprano (J.S. Bach)

6. Ave Maria by Charlotte Church (J.S. Bach)

7. Lascia ch’io Pianga by Izzy (Izzy) - Isobel Cooper

8. Una Furtiva Lagrima by Izzy (Izzy) - Isobel Cooper

9. Pavane by Izzy (Izzy) - Isobel Cooper

10. Sull’Aria (The Marriage of Figaro) by Izzy (Izzy) - Isobel Cooper

11. Lucia di Lammermore - Mad Scene (Donizetti) by Sumi Jo (live)

12. Un Bel Di Vedremo by Izzy (Izzy)

13. Alhambra by Sarah Brightman

14. En Aranjuez con tu Amor by Sarah Brightman

15. Ave Maria by Sumi Jo (Schubert)

16. Ave Maria by Sumi Jo (Caccini)

17. Ave Maria by Radu Marian, male soprano (J.S. Bach)

— ««-»» —

Deirdre’s Playlist

1. Answer by Sarah McLachlan (Afterglow)

2. Fhir a’ Bhàta by Sìne NicFhionnlaigh (No recording available)

3. Fhir a’ Bhàta by Jennifer Shelton Licko (Live alternate to the above in mostly English)

4. Fear A’ Bhàta by Capercaillie (Get Out or The Blood is Strong)

5. A Woman’s Voice by Wendy Wall (Wendy Wall)

6. Absence of Fear by Jewel (Spirit)

7. Real Tears by Stevie Nicks (B-Side of Two Kinds of Love single)

8. Ring on the Sill by Cowboy Junkies (Pale Sun, Crescent Moon or Waltz Across America)

9. Ain’t No Cure for Love by Jennifer Warnes (Famous Blue Raincoat)

10. Men & Women by Tanita Tikaram (Eleven Kinds of Loneliness)

11. Orphan Girl by Gillian Welch (Revival)

12. Rivers of Babylon by The Melodians

13. Volcano Girls by Veruca Salt (Eight Arms to Hold You)

14. Hickory Wind by Emmylou Harris - Written by Sylvia Sammons (Blue Kentucky Girl)

15. Fuck ’em If They Can’t Take a Joke, featuring Ava Leigh by 30,000 Bastards (30,000 Leagues Under the Scene)

16. Rhiannon by Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac - White Album)

17. Ave Maria by Radu Marian, male soprano (J.S. Bach)

Jasper’s Playlist

1. Oh, Happy Day Edward Hawkins Singers (Oh Happy Day: The Best of the Edwin Hawkins Singers)

2. Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen) by k.d. lang (Hymns of the 49th Parallel)

3. Macho Man by Village People (Macho Man)

4. Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve (Urban Hymns)

5. When I Get Where I’m Going by Brad Paisley (Time Well Wasted)

6. Ave Maria by Radu Marian, male soprano (J.S. Bach)

— ««-»» —

Fhir a’ Bhàta
by Sìne NicFhionnlaigh

Séist (Chorus):
Fhir a’ bhàta, na hó-ro éi-le
Fhir a’ bhàta, na hó-ro éi-le
Fhir a’ bhàta, na hó-ro éi-le
Mo shoraidh slàn dhuit’s gach àit’ an téid thu!

’S tric mi sealltuinn o’n chnoc a’s àirde,
Dh’fheuch am faic mi fear a’bhàta;
An tig thu ’n diugh, no ’n tig thu màireach
’S mar tig thu idir, gur truagh a tà mi.

Tha mo chrìdhe-sa briste, brùite;
S’tric na deòir a’ruidh o m’ shùilean;
An tig thu’n nochd, na ’m bi mo dhùil riut,
Na ’n dùin mi ’n dorus, le osna thùrsaich?

’S tric mi foighneachd de luchd ’nam bàta,
Am faic iad thu, na ’m bheil thu sàbhailt;
Ach ’s ann a tha gach aon diubh ’g ràitinn,
Gur gòrach mise ma thug mi gràdh dhuit.

Gheall mo leannan domh gun do ’n t-sìoda,
Gheall e sud agus breacan rìomhach;
Fainn’ òir anns am faicinn ’ìomhaigh;
Ach ’s eagal leam gun dean e dì-chuimhn’.

Cha’n eil baile beag ’s am bì thu,
Nach tàmh thu greis ann, a chur do sgios dhiot;
Bheir thu làmh air do leabhar rìomhach,
A ghabhail dhuanag ’s a bhuaireadh nionag.

Ged a thuirt iad gun robh thu aotrom,
Cha do lughdaich sud mo ghaol ort;
Bidh tu m’ aisling anns an oidhche,
’Us anns a’ mhadainn bidh mi ’gad fhoighneachd.

Thug mi gaol dhut, ’s cha’n fhaod mi àicheadh;
Cha ghaol bliadhna, ’s cha ghaol ràidhe;
Ach gaol a thòisich ’n uair bha mi m’phàisdein,
’S nach searg a chaoidh, gus an claoidh am bàs mi.

Tha mo chàirdean gu tric ag ìnnseadh,
Gum feum mi d’aogas a leig’ air dì-chuimhn’;
Ach tha ’n comhairle dhomh cho diamhain;
’S bhi tilleadh mara ’s i tabhairt lionaidh.

Tha mo chriosan air dol an airde,
Cha’n ann bho fhidhleir, na bho chlàrsair;
Ach bho stiùireadair a bhàta —
’S mur tig thu dhachaigh, gur truagh mar tha mi.

Bi’dh mi tuille tùrsach, déurach,
Mar eala bhàn ’s i an déighs a réubadh;
Guileag bàis aic’ air lochan féurach,
’Us cach gu léir an déis a tréigeadh.

The song, “Fhir a’ Bhàta”, mentioned in this text and often incorrectly identified as “traditional” was composed in the late 18th Century by Sìne NicFhionnlaigh - Jane Finlay (Finlayson) of Tong, Lewis for a young Uig fisherman, Donald MacRae, who used to fish out of Loch Roag. The most interesting part of their story is that they married each other about a year after she wrote the song for him, but most commentators somehow miss the dénouement.

The song is briefly mentioned (with melody in standard musical notation) in The Scottish Gael by James Logan, first published in 1876, available online. See also Derrick Thomson’s An introduction to Gaelic poetry, pp62-63, where it’s mentioned briefly. The full text of the song with seven verses (with approximate translation) is available in an archival edition of The Songs of the Gael: a Collection of Gaelic Songs by Lachlan MacBean (1890) and is available online at the Internet Archive. Another source, with nine verses, is Altavona: Fact and Fiction from My Life in the Highlands by John Stuart Blackie (1882), available as a Google Book or in the used marketplace. Both of the preceding works include a lead sheet and lyrics for the chorus.

—««-»»—

Kubla Khan
Or, A Vision in a Dream.
A Fragment

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh ! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover !
A savage place ! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover !
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced :
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail :
And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean :
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war !

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves ;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw :
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome ! those caves of ice !
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware ! Beware !
His flashing eyes, his floating hair !
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Stephanie here uses it as a metaphor for an imaginary place, but also as a scathing reference to deulusional grandiosity and self-destructive folly.

—««-»»—

Copyright © 2009 Liobhan — All Rights Reserved Worldwide

This story may not be reposted on any other site.

Tooltips: Quite a lot of background information for this story is contained in ‘tooltips,’ explanatory text which can be accessed by ‘hovering’ over a word or phrase with your mouse or other pointing device cursor. It’s quite likely that tooltips are broken in your browser, since they’re more or less broken in every major browser, which is a shame, since they offer an unobtrusive version of hypertext that can be taken advantage of without requiring one to exit the current page or to follow a link.

In some browsers, the ‘tooltip’ text will be truncated, badly formatted, or both, and may be absent altogether. Without looking at the source code, it may be difficult to figure out exactly what’s going on. As a rather elegant workaround, Terry Volkirch has coded a little JavaScript programme which forces tooltips to be displayed in their entirety but, for technical reasons, this code cannot be used on this site. As a workaround for the workaround, I'm working on creating an offsite location which can be linked to each of the stories in Spin Cycle, and which allows the use of Terry’s code.

I’ll let you know when this is ready.