Perfect Architect

by Jayne Joso

  Again I am made to spell something out to you. Vexed, I am. LOVERS of mine, madam, are exactly that and no damn metaphor. Do you think that my seniority in years makes me dead all over? On what do you base such assumptions, pray? Goodness gracious me! Are you gone quite mad? Though the companionship of neither man nor woman can generally offer me anything I might find useful, there are still desires in this soul, and of this body, whose thirst for life, poetry and even grit, are deliciously and gainfully sought and met.

  Now that I have that off my chest, I shall take a sherry and a break, and then add a few more lines, though you don’t deserve them.

  Half a bloody bottle! I hope you’re happy. I am. No I must not go overboard with you, and my humour is something you haven’t yet quite understood. I had intended, but indeed forgot to add in my last letter, that perhaps a stint in Italy would do you a power of good. Tell me, when Charles was alive, did you ever do what you want? Do you ever do what you want?

  As for visiting me, darling you must not take this unkindly, but really no. I do so like my life the way it is. Don’t come. This has no bearing on your recent foolish correspondence, but really I just know what suits me. I know you’ll find that hard to take. I’ll look out some photographs, the dogs and suchlike to show there’s no hard feeling. I can’t do it now but will send them on another time.

  I was actually thinking that perhaps you should take that postman to bed, if he is so enamoured! Sex, darling, a very underestimated medicine in my book. Don’t be shocked, or indeed ‘do’ be shocked, it’s jolly well time you were. Time, sweet Gaia, to wake up.

  My warmest affection with this short sharp slap

  Selené

  Chapter Ten

  Monroe-kissable

  Cara was more than a size bigger than Gaia, she just liked to wear things clingy. Cara was BIG, bigger than Tom for sure, and with all the kids and the fetching and carrying for them, she was pretty strong too. She ran on a short fuse, and it seems fair to say, that when she decided to bite, she had too much in common with a certain dog they once owned. Tom, a two pit bull man. That possibly made him a too stupid man, but stupid or not, most couldn’t help but like him.

  Cara continued looking for her missing scratch card, and looking turned to searching, and soon the touch paper was lit. She took to hollering, cushion bashing, magazine hurling and soundwave abusing. Tom was lucky. He wasn’t home.

  Her pretty green eyes sparkled, her pupils pin-pricks and homing in on every surface. She clawed her pinky stuck-on-nails through the living room waste paper basket, down the sides of the sofa, through her tangled angry hair. Her hair was pretty when she brushed it, she was, all told, pretty, except when she was mad, “Pretty all over, that’s my Cara, it’s just about the only word that’ll do. Pretty,” Tom would say, “except when she was mad.”

  “If we still had that dumb dog, I’d swear it was him that’d stolen and chewed up my card.” Cara, was looking for clues, first removing certain creatures from the frame of suspicion and fine-tuning the list of possible suspects. Two nails had been sacrificed in the search and this clearly upped the ante. The kids couldn’t be included in the investigations. The kids knew better.

  Tom sauntered up the pathway, whistling. Cara hated whistling. She put on some music in an attempt to cool down a little. She scanned the list of tunes, her anger management self-help book advised on choosing something light and cheery that would encourage a change of mood. Tom Jones, that was it, over the top, old fashioned groove, that might just do it. She selected the playing order of the tracks, her breathing coming under more control. ‘This and That’ was the first track, and she slowly let her shoulders roll around, as though some great hunk was massaging them. Hips swaying, she sang along with the lyrics. As her husband reached the front door and stepped inside she’d just reached the chorus, her favourite part.

  Ooh I’ve had e-nough of this and that, and this and that is no good!

  I said, I’ve had e-nough of this and that, and this and that is no good!

  These last words, and catching sight of poor Tom, were just what was required to rev that woman’s anger-engine. She snarled. He spoke, “Wow, I never seen old Jonesy work that into his routine, makes you look kinda mean, Cara. You’re far too pretty for that.”

  She turned and fixed her sight on him. Homing in on the target. Two nails down, she could do less damage than with a full set but she could still do plenty.

  “What’s up, Cara? You having a bad day, babe?”

  “When you ‘babe’ me, it’s always a sure sign you’re behind what’s bugging me. You took my scratch card didn’t you, DIDN’T YOU?” Tom Jones had run on:

  More than the greatest love the world has ever known

  This – is the love I’ll give – to you alone…

  Tom Bradshaw’s big mistake here was to think he might serenade her out of this killer mood. He tried to work in a few dance moves. Unfortunately for him the track jumped to ‘Ten Guitars’. Cara yelled over both Toms and took a firm grip of her husband’s pride and joy guitar. She smiled cunningly, lifting the guitar and swirling it high above her head, slowly, carefully, at first.

  Dance, dance, dance to my ten guitars…

  Tom turned on his heel to witness his ‘other love’ being rotated like a helicopter blade. He froze, one foot still mid-air. Now she froze. The ‘other love’ held captive overhead. Her features softened, the power, all hers. The adrenalin was fed like it had been injected, full speed, and she was buzzing. Nervously Tom enquired, “You alright? You looked real sexy, singing and swaying as I walked in.” Silence, no words at all, the music ran out, just the hum of traffic up and down the street outside. Tom began to stammer, “Somethin… on you-r mind? Aren’t you gonna say something, babe?”

  “I already said, and you know exactly what’s on my mind, and if you don’t own up right soon, this guitar is gonna be on yours.” She licked her bottom lip. She had gorgeous, plump sweetheart lips, Monroe-kissable Tom called them, though he didn’t much fancy his chances with such comparisons right now. It was weird though, she was so angry, there was his guitar about to be smashed to smithereens, and yet he felt strangely turned on by the whole scene. Hormones, he thought, really dumb things at times. Stop thinking about sex, she’s about to destroy my gui-tar, hell! Fortunately his instincts told him that wiggling his own hips and a few verses of ‘Dr. Love’ weren’t going to get him out of this one, and he had sense enough to remain still.

  “Yes it was me,” he said, as though confessing to murder.

  A day later it turned out that their neighbour, Myrtle, head of the neighbourhood watch team, god-bless-her, had witnessed Tom taking the scratch card to collect his winnings, Tom was then doubly pleased that he’d so quickly chosen the route of confession. He did manage to get away with a partial lie. He said he’d taken the card at a moment of weakness, which was something Cara could relate to, she was often subject to the same, but he shrunk the amount of his winnings to the second lowest possible, hoping against hope that the tenacious, tentacled Myrtle hadn’t had him under too close a surveillance the whole time. Did that woman have nothing else to do? Cara accepted the slightly forced-out-of-him confession and took the amount as truth, saying he owed her the same plus the cost of an entire new set of nails. Ouch! That false stuff is pricey, but a lot more pain and guitar abuse may have come his way, and he knew he’d got off lightly. Phew! The admission also resulted in the surprising sexual gratitude of the Monroe-kissable; hey, every cloud!

  “Well Tom, I’m really proud that you didn’t try and deny it. You’re a good boy mostly, just I have to keep an eye on you.” Cara was younger than Tom, though nobody would guess it. She sat on his lap running her fingers through his hair, playing now with her other favourite lyrics, as sung by the kissable:

  …it is naughty, but then

  Oh… do it again,


  Ple-ase, do it again.

  She sounded nothing like Monroe, but he could shush her gently, and when he half closed his eyes, she sure felt like her.

  Chapter Eleven

  What Counts

  Charles Ore had always sought to learn as much as his brain could possibly hold. As a child it was evident that he had both a photographic memory and a very active visual imagination. One of his earliest obsessions lay with maps, and for a while he was entirely devoted to exactly that: considering longitudes and latitudes, imposing new gridlines, a touch of realignment here and there, redrawing boundaries, contemplating fixed and moveable points. A spot of global management, one might say. To Selené’s mind, Charles was the kind of child who should be actively discouraged from a career in politics.

  Charles was a brilliant, if eccentric little boy and his desire for knowledge was insatiable: all knowledge, though particularly of mathematics and art. It was as though the role of architect lay waiting for him. Selené had been relieved by this, finding architecture the lesser of several evils, once remarking, “There are three careers that seem to have been prepared for the egomaniac: Politics, Parenting, and Architecture!” In his adult years, Charles would certainly come to agree with her – with regard at least, to the first two. In his early teens, he avidly pursued an interest in building design, in structure, and process. His emotional development however, came a poor second to the intellectual, and his inability to recognise the types of behaviour generally considered acceptable or preferable, was quite impaired. This landed him in trouble. Much of the time, he could explain his way out of things when faults were levelled at him, or else his doting parents would romance him out of bother. It was often easy to forgive the gifted boy, but over time, he became less inclined to explain, and threads of arrogance began to find root. If people were too stupid to realise the importance of his research, his interests, then young Charles had no time to explain. At thirteen he rather aggressively and pompously exclaimed, “Mother, as the Chinese would say,: It is like playing the violin to a cow!” The mother, too easily amused, watered the roots, and the father provided manure, ensuring virulent growth, “Quite right my boy, there’s no educating fools!” Charles was an only child; Hermoine and Henrik, his only parents. If it had not been for the occasional interventions of a certain not-even-blood-related sort of aunt, things could arguably have been worse.

  Evil’s Folly…

  At the sweet and tender age of nine, Charles embarked on what most would term: breaking and entering. To Charles, intellectual acrobatics and the pursuit of knowledge could not be fettered by petty matters such as ownership of property, seeking permission, respecting privacy, damage to said property, or the nerves of old ladies.

  At around eleven o’clock one adrenalin-soaked evening, a determined young Charles ventured out on an analytical architectural MISSION. Evelyn Dawn, secretly nicknamed Evil-in by Charles, was deep in slumber. She was well over eighty and lived, Charles presumed, alone. She had enjoyed her nightcap and taken to her bed shortly after nine. Evelyn Dawn lived in an old enchanted folly; it was easy to see why children found it fascinating, but the rumours of witchery were sufficient to keep most small demons at bay.

  Charles decided to break into the ancient folly through one of its numerous dark-paned windows. This one was tantalisingly high up. He shone his lengthy, narrow-beamed torch upwards, feeling the buzz of his adventure. This magical folly had been the subject of intense interest to Charles since he was small, and now he was ‘big’ he was actually entering the bewitching dwelling, now he would get things answered, test out his structural hypotheses.

  Evil’s Folly… just how was that building constructed? It wasn’t easy to tell from the outside. Charles had trailed around it dozens of times looking for clues, and once even managed to roam about the roof, but alas, nothing. So it had to be done. He’d simply had to go in. It never occurred to Charles to ask anyone, see if his parents might arrange a visit, a look around, for where would the fun have been in that? Besides, she was Evil-in and would never have permitted it, of that he was sure. It was also an adventure, the type of thing that young men have to accomplish entirely by themselves, otherwise – it simply doesn’t count!

  Having levered open the window, one set at quite a ridiculous angle (he was beginning to regret having chosen this one), he perched some moments on the ledge, his heart pounding viciously. It might explode. He must slow that breathing, calm a little lest he hyperventilate. Missions cannot be ruined before they are hardly even begun! He made a mental note about that, and just as he did he lost his balance. He wavered, almost out, then overcompensating and falling inwards and with too much speed. Wow! That was completely disconcerting, the floor should never have been that far down! He dropped and dropped and when he did hit the floor it shot up through him with a judder. A painful, ankle-twisting, neck-jerking judder. He’d managed to keep hold of the torch, but in adjusting to the light, the dark had tricked him. He bashed the torch on the ground in anger, and now it would keep cutting out on him. Pride comes at a price, especially aged nine. The problem wasn’t that the torch-bashing woke Evil-in, she was half deaf, the problem waa-aas… that it disturbed her cat, who wasn’t.

  Now Charles, whilst for the most part fearless, was deeply afraid of all things feline: tigers, jaguars, panthers, and worst of all, DOMESTIC CATS! Gigi bounded down the stone stairwell and stealthily swung herself into the dug-out basement that contained the intruder, Meeeeow! Gigi peered sideways, then slowly, like a search light, looked deep across the room. Green eyes. Charles had frozen in position, pins and needles in one arm, cramp developing in the other, and legs, possibly broken. He took out his notebook and made a quick reconnoitre: stuck in enemy territory, sustained probable permanent injury, unarmed, and now being circled by THE ENEMY’S TROOPS (there might well be more hiding in the shadows… as back up!). Unfortunately there was nothing written into the rule book that said a child genius would be blessed with decent battle skills. If he kept still, she might not see him, but his eyes soon betrayed his position, and in the slightest of movements she’d got him. Now they were eyeball to eyeball, and Gigi had her prey.

  Her hips swayed, her body rippled, her thick fur coat proudly adorning; her sultry eyelashes whipping the stilled atmosphere. Charles felt her presence digest all the oxygen, he couldn’t breathe. Her eyes changed colour, her pupils changed shape, the room span around. His head fell and his body crumpled to meet his shortened zigzagged legs.

  When Charles came round, his legs weren’t broken, his body wasn’t tied to a rack, nor was Gigi the sabre-tooth that she had taken the shape of during his dream, but curiously, he was now wearing a hat, a rather weighty, rather warm… hat. Without moving, he peered from side to side and up and around, no enemy, phew! Then a tickle in his ear alerted him to his hat, but he didn’t have a hat, he had never owned a hat. Gigi purred, her tail tickling his ear and the side of his neck, she sat proudly on the head of her prey. She stretched a paw out straight and tweaked the purple air with her talons. The tightness in his chest returned. He needed to breathe, needed to move, throw off this creature, keep focused on the mission, for this was a MISSION after all! One, grasped, and deep as he could muster, breath, and he leapt to his feet. Gigi fled, clawing his cheek as she went. His legs felt crushed, his ankles were twisted but he shot up and onto a ledge in sheer determination. There! He took some moments to breathe properly and reassess. The notebook re-emerged, OK: penetrated enemy territory, tick: goal achieved; maintaining position behind enemy lines, tick: goal achieved; encountered sabre-tooth tiger, proved to be quite an obstacle, fought and outwitted sabre-tooth, tick: goal achieved; incurred injuries – this is a setback but adds to the challenge, must not give up! Important: main enemy not alerted, main objective still intact and possible to achieve, achievement of main goal despite injury, will – enhance mission success! Must move on!

  Charles gave his legs a quick r
ub, but decided that the pain and discomfort would simply have to be ignored! He had to be a man. He pulled himself up almost straight, being a man is a tough business, he thought, a tear in the corner of his eye.

  He realised that the ledge he was now on formed part of a series, and where he had fallen from the window was a deep shaft into a dugout room. The terracing itself seemed to have no purpose, a physical joke almost. The shaft made sense in as much as it might simply have been a trap for burglars, a dropped void, quite sensible in Charles’ estimation despite having fallen victim to it himself. But not for a second did it occur to him that he may appear to be a burglar, and as he certainly had no intention of taking anything, such an interpretation would have been entirely lost on him. He scrambled from one ledge to the next, trying to assign functions to them whilst aiming for a door to the side of one further up.

  Gigi, meantime, was most offended by the disruptive behaviour of her captive. She licked her claw, boy’s blood! Too sweet. She shook out her coat in disgust, then set off to alert her companion, the eminent Evelyn Dawn, to the presence of the intruder.

  Charles pushed at the wooden door, moving about slowly, noting structural details as he went along but straining to see clearly, the torch was still playing up, and his head still felt fuzzy. The folly seemed so much bigger on the inside, mysterious, cavernous!

  Gigi puffed out her chest and swaggered into her companion’s chamber. She jumped onto the bed. She clawed a little at the embroidery on the bedspread, she’d never liked that fussy floral stitching, she’d have a good go at it another day. Now, for the job at hand, first step: wake the woman. She curled herself around Evelyn Dawn’s head, and firmly held her tail moustachioed across the face, closing up the nostrils. Cut their breathing and they wake in no time, if they’re not dead already. Gigi had had that happen once, with a previous companion.