He actually dared to feel sexy. Up until now, he saw the term sexy as something for women, and the select top ten Hollywood male stars. The rest of the male kingdom was resigned to the status of being parasites on the land of lovely and sexy women; sexiness was only to be found by associating with a lovely woman. Now he found himself capable of providing sexiness to a woman, to his Cat. He wanted to be sexy and he enjoyed the feelings of sexiness reserved, up until now, for the fairer sex: Colors, textures and cuts of clothes. It was this that Cat was able to start to observe, accelerate and take advantage of.
As she started to take advantages of his newly re-discovered senses, she found that he actually was getting into what she thought was 'sociology-talk,' theoretical things meant for the women's magazines, but not something to take seriously. She found him 'getting in touch with his feminine side.' He was spending time enjoying the soft slow pleasures of kissing. Soft lips, light touches of tongues became the events they were for young girls, and stopped being the necessary precursors as older men saw them. She found he enjoying touching and stroking, just for itself. She noted that he seemed quite content to doing more of the 'women's work' around the house, and on one particular day she caught herself staring at ESPN to catch the end of a ballgame, while he was busy vacuuming the house. She smiled and realized that six months earlier, the roles would have easily been reversed.
Steven loved it. It was better than opening a sci-fi book and discovering an alternative universe. He was living an alternative universe, and he thought he couldn't be happier. But it turned out he could. Everything Catherine uncovered, she would see if there was still more lying below the surface. She was far from done, far from manipulating his sensory world, and far from discovering what she could learn about the both of them.
Chapter 13: Captain Jack 3
It was several weeks later and a continent away when next she encountered Captain Jack. A client in Florida was so happy with their work on a condominium complex, that they flew Catherine and Mike to London to offer a consultation on a design for a reworking on an apartment in Knightsbridge. England, in fact all of Europe, thinks about time differently than America. Until an American goes to Europe, they will have a poor sense of time. And until a European tries to cross a good portion of the North American continent, they will have no sense of distance.
Europeans respect their past, but realize they need to change. It is that balancing act that makes the visitors to that continent see and marvel at buildings and monuments that pre-date the European occupation of America. Here is a monument stolen from pre-Christian era Egypt and sporting bullet holes from German planes in World War II. Over here is a church dating from 1191, three hundred years before Columbus, and it did not even warrant notation on Catherine's walking tour of London map.
So the first impression might be that the English are reluctant to change, but that would be all wrong. First, there always seems to be some construction going on, and there are modern buildings adjacent to ancient cathedrals. Second, every aged building will not appear aged inside. Many a grey stone building shaded with Napoleon era soot harbored bright lights, Baltic birch and brushed aluminum decor.
Mike had to deal with building codes that had four levels of restoration restrictions. On one end was the freedom to destroy and rebuild and on the other, amenities such as electricity and running water had to be bolted on the surface of walls so to preserve the integrity of the intra-wall space. As such things were negotiable, he would need to suffer through seemingly endless meetings of people speaking in a British code of impervious politeness. He never knew whether it was his inability to read their true intentions, or whether the true intentions weren't known to the Brits themselves. They always seemed sincere in their promises to a timeline, but he never could find the formula for estimating the actual date from the promises. Should he add a week to every week promised? Perhaps 20% longer. Substitute the word 'week' for every 'day' promised? Does 'soon' mean 'next to never?' Or ‘never?'
Catherine set about coordinating the desires of the customers to a potential bill of materials, depending on Mike's findings. Exposed elements such as electrical tubing and water pipes became design elements that would drive other options out of the picture. But if the lathe and plaster could be replaced with sheetrock, then the walls become blank slates to which she could paint the customer's personalities.
She headed back to her hotel, while Mike was, again, pulled into another endless meeting where dinner was not the ending punctuation mark to the meeting sentence, but merely a comma. Inside the room was another set of boxes, with a note requesting a return of the dress and shoes, and a command, not a request, to be ready at 2 PM the next day. She no longer wondered how Captain Jack knew her availability. She knew money could buy information, spies, or bribes. She felt less like she was being manipulated, and more like she was being swept along by the flow of something larger than her. She found herself fascinated with what was next. In the box was a silk pink coat dress. The underwear was all black, and the shoes were a black set of straps with high heels and a thick platform sole.
She closed up the boxes and left the Intercontinental and walked down the two blocks to the Spaghetti House and ate dinner alone. She pondered on the next day. The dress was lovely, but she hadn't tried anything on. She almost did not want to know too much. Rather, she wanted to be willing to be surprised as the events and feelings unfolded. She even wondered if Captain Jack was trying to play with her mind even more by allowing her to ease into her character for tomorrow. A pink dress was aimed at making her feel softer, but she felt he might have erred this one time with the black lingerie. He might have known where she was physically, but he couldn't have known that she loved wearing black lingerie and felt powerful in it. She would look all ‘girlie’ in her pink dress, but she would know it to be a mere shell. Below, she knew, she was a very sexy woman who could take a man's breath away, especially in the high heels. As she ate her dinner, she let her mind drift to seeing her husband on his knees, drinking in her form; a cruel smile danced across her face as she imagined what she could do to a man lusting after her. Pain or denial, it didn't matter. Tenderness threatened to be turned into a twist of a nipple or a squeeze of his balls, or perhaps more soft strokes would lift him towards an orgasm she would choke off at the last second. It didn't matter, she could do anything and he couldn't stop her, and more importantly, he didn't want to stop her. He wanted to surrender to her, to have her rejoice in her power over him. She felt the warmth of that thought. Captain Jack certainly did not know what he had done. He might have misunderstood the power of color that she knew. Perhaps he thought of how sexy it would be to see the contrast of black to her skin, how much it would accent the soft swell of her breasts, emphasize the narrow curve of her waist, or show off the length of her legs. But she knew how powerful she would feel.
After dinner, she walked slowly back to the hotel, past the bus stop with people craning necks to catch the destinations of the oncoming buses, through the intersection where she first had to cross at the very brief crossing light, and then down under the street where the beggar quietly whispered, "Spare change?" then with the shake of her head, "have a good night, Miss." As she walked, she wondered if Captain Jack was playing another game at a level she couldn't comprehend, and now her self confidence in her sexual power was a bit off stride. She smiled as she entered the lobby of the hotel, one door held by the doorman, the second propped open. A musician played a jazzy keyboard at the bar as she walked to the elevator lobby. Women in long gowns and men in tuxedos emerged from the elevators and she went up to her room. She wanted the night to end quickly. She wanted tomorrow to come and the next step to be taken. If there was one thing of which she was certain, the process was going to progress. She looked forward to seeing what was next. She more than wanted to know what was next. There were many things she wanted to know. Was there another gunman on the grassy knoll? Why the British say aluminum the way they do? And since there was no
such thing as lifting down, why were things named lifts? Elevators and escalators went both ways, not just up. Those were just wants. No, she needed to know what was next. She fell to a troubled sleep, imagining herself in black underwear in front of a man she couldn't see.
The next morning drug slowly, despite the Saturday paper, breakfast and an early lunch. After a slow hot shower, she applied her makeup and finally began dressing. She had wanted to delay this as long as possible, lest the emotions of the clothes peak too early. The black bra, panty and garter belt set were luxuriously lacy and soft. She stood in front of the mirror and smiled at her image. She half wanted Captain Jack to see her in this outfit. She wanted him to feel defeated in his effort to make her feel less powerful with the pink dress and skimpy underwear. The bra barely covered her nipples, and the narrow sided bikini panty allowed the slightest little tease of her ass cheek to peek out. But instead of feeling nearly naked, she felt a swell of pride and a glow of confidence. She slid the pink dress coat on, fastening the four lowest out of the five rows of buttons. The lowest button left nearly a foot before the mid-thigh hem. As she walked around, the dress opened to show a bit more leg. The open top button, fortunately, did not threaten to show her bra strap as the collar lay flat with a slight ‘vee’ neck, and the shoulders gathered into a blossom under a looped epaulette, before descending to a long sleeve, with a black square buckle on the wrist. The pink belt both wrapped casually around the waist and sported a matching black buckle. The effect was a feminine short skirt with a military neck and shoulder. Over her sheer stockings, the shoes were black with a huge cuff around her ankle, locked in place with two straps buckled on the side. An open toe, midfoot and heel left a two to three inch toe box on the thick soled, five inch heel. With a short skirt and tall heels, she felt quite satisfied with herself and less at a disadvantage than the other events she had attended with him. The chauffer showed up at her door, precisely, at 2 and escorted her down and into the limo. Captain Jack was in the back and had her turn and hold her hair up as he re-applied her diamond and platinum circle collar and she felt all her confidence drain away.
"Are you wearing everything?" He asked as she pirouetted about to take her seat across from him. She blushed as she nodded. She now admitted to herself that she felt very much in the man's grasp and did not feel as upset about it as she believed she should. She was not outraged at his impertinence at asking what lingerie she was wearing, nor was she bothered that she had told him. She almost felt owned by him, almost felt like she wanted him to know her, to run his hands over her like he would a prize thoroughbred that she imagined he owned.
They went to the Imperial War Museum. It was off the Lambeth North tube station. The town was well bricked and, while clean, there was a rather sterile feel to the place. An entire block of brick apartments had pretty much the same architecture, rather than the uniqueness normally seen in the city.
The museum was set in a middle of a small park with two 15 inch guns pointing out from the entrance. These guns were from two battleships, now retired. They fired a 1900 pound shell 16 and ¼ miles. Inside they had tanks and planes and guns from World Wars one and two in the main floor. Stories on each brought the human side to the equipment. The Mustang was not a favored plane until they changed the engine and then it became much loved. Other planes and tanks and guns had their stories. They were like people, too short, too slow, or too fast to turn, not enough power, too vulnerable. A recurring theme in the discussion of weapons was the flaw in the designs.
At four O’clock, two older gentlemen in uniforms, with full military ribbons on their chests spoke, one at a time, into a microphone as they sat before a table, a semicircle of 3 or 4 rows of chairs looking in. They spoke of joining up during World War II as they came of age. Catherine back calculated their ages as being about 84. They spoke with only a little hesitancy, apologizing for their age, but they spoke of human things like being sea sick and claustrophobic and instead of dreading hitting the beach, looked forward to it as a better, but riskier place. Then they spoke of seeing all the bodies stacked up for recovery, or serving as a corpsman and seeing the pain and blood.
Captain Jack opined that it is perhaps that conflict of young boys not knowing what is ahead that makes war possible. The buildup of the imperative to stop an evil and the feeling that the righteous will always find a way to defeat the bad. But the other side feels the same way. He told her of a story of the unofficial 1914 Christmas truce where the German and Allied troops came together in the middle of the bloody war and toasted Christmas with each other. It was considered noble and wonderful and it was forbidden from ever happening again. The Generals could not have the soldiers thinking of the enemy in human terms.
The audience sat and waited out the two gentlemen. It would not be many more years before there will be no one to tell the story, the human story of the smell, the thoughts and the memories of that war.
Captain Jack mused that war takes an everlasting toll on those who serve in them. The sight of death, he claimed, marred the ones who had no physical wounds as well. "It was the same or something like it from everyone who ever survived the war. I don’t think anyone ever escapes from war uninjured. Guilt or the denial of a portion of their memory always tainted their lives. It is no wonder so many of them display aberrant behavior."
Catherine wondered what war he had survived, for she had no doubt that he was a veteran of some battle. The faraway look in his eyes, the quiet firmness in his anger towards war had to come from someone who had seen it. He was not here to celebrate war. She wondered why he brought her here. He seemed less powerful, less capable in comparison to the momentum of war. The War Museum added to her knowledge of him. She watched his rage at the senselessness of the events.
He opined that the economies and vision and anticipation were out of balance. The cost of wars was phenomenal. The greatest costs were in human lives. "To me, not that any war made it to my list of favorites, World War I was the most terrifying of all the wars. It was then that the technology of weapons exceeded the strategy of the generals and vulnerability of the soldiers."
He pointed out the displays documenting how machine guns kept men penned in the trenches until strategic needs demanded a charge. For four years men died in machine gun fire, poison gases, diseases and barbed wire while the lines hardly moved at all. In single battles, 600,000 casualties resulted on a side.
One quote from 1995 said that since World War II, only one year occurred when there wasn’t a single British fatality due to military action. The museum did not glorify war as much as it documented it.
He shook his head slowly, “The horrors of war are balanced by the need to reduce the chance for worse. But when you see the failed strategies of battles, you begin to worry about the strategies of the wars themselves. When you see millions of men and women and children on death rolls, you worry about how many Einsteins and James Joyces died in all these wars and how much less our world is for all the deaths. "
He continued in a low sad voice, "The economies, visions and anticipations of wars are out of balance, too. The costs of wars have taken King and Party out of power and drained the enthusiasms for war. It requires only no memory of war to propel a conflict into another one.
"The visions of wars are imaginations that some better thing will result. Yet, it may never be so. Even in victory, the losses seem excessive. The losers find resentment in the result, becoming the seed for the next war.”
"The beginnings of wars find braggarts and anthems, quotes and vows. Victory, total and decisive is the only acceptable result. Then the black bags and boxes, dirges and elegies begin. Then peace becomes a desire rather than a result."
Catherine, once again, wondered why he brought her here. He seemed finally ready to let her inside his soul. She smiled inwardly, with the opening he seemed to be offering. Women share with each other, she knew, and a woman opening up her feelings was a matter of course, where a man who opened up, was looking for a connectio
n. She thought he was showing his soft side. She already believed him to be a man of a varied past. Now she was convinced he was an ex military man and he was showing his doubts about his company, his history, the very thing that made him who was. No man did this without feeling safe with who they were conversing. Now, she felt, was the time for her to move up the ladder in his eyes. She would show him she was more than a pretty escort. She would be someone to be his confidant. She would now take this little chink in his wall of distant power and open it up to a world of endless interplay and sharing. She would take a harder feminine stand with him and pull him from his self protecting, self absorbed shell. She would show him what an intelligent, vibrant woman could do.
As they exited the museum, through the garden and past the ice cream shop where little children licked their sticky fingers and mothers ran for napkins, she asked him, "Is there another name other than Captain Jack that I can call you? It seems terribly formal. Especially after all of that." She swung her long, slender arm back towards the War Museum.
He stopped and looked at her. His eyes looked through her as he paused to consider her request. "No," he replied, "Not just yet. But soon, I'll have something else you might call me." He smiled and turned back towards the waiting limo. And she knew, just knew, she had miscalculated horribly. Captain Jack, the unattainable, was still here. She was not his match, and never would be. She felt, more now than ever, a bought thing, a purchased date. She wanted to be more than that. While normally she would be furious with a woman feeling this way, she was not at all incensed at her feelings. She felt a desire to make herself more in his eyes. She wanted him to pay attention to her, to care for her as much as he cared for those poor soldiers in the trenches. She knew now the power of a leader such as Captain Jack, why the soldiers would go over the top of the trenches to fight a nearly impossible battle, for she felt she would do the nearly impossible for his attention.
Three Sides of the Coin (Catherine I) Page 14
