Batwoman - Bon Ton Roulet

(Schodt – Angel No. 8 Original Mix. Music begins @ here).

Kate Kane looked downwards quizzically at her dresser, the redoubtable Raldi M'Raldi - the highly modern English-raised and educated, Sudanese private couture and bespoke fashion expert.

“Are you sure?” She asked.

“Oh yes.” He replied with supreme confidence.

“But are you sure,” she re-iterated, quietly saying in her mind: but is he sure...

There he was, kneeling and adjusting her super-900's barathea trouser legs around the tops of her bespoke Chelsea boots.

“Shouldn't they be opera pumps? Or Oxford's? I like from Corthay's or someone – I know Pierre. I can get something from him flown in overnight.”

“Oh no. Not for this -” Raldi waved his hands around her body with his typical affected flourish style. “For this,” he explained. “we are delivering a classical, strict, proper, and very brutally pure and authentic formal look, with some seriously educated individual self-expression. An allowable twist, let us say. Though only likely to be known so by the aficionado.”

Why did he have to say 'brutal' like that, she thought. And place such a heavy stress on the word.

“Ms. Kane, are you comfortable in these?”

“Yes, yes. Very. They're very comfortable. I could dance all night in them. Lol.”

“Well.” He stood up with satisfaction and stood erect to his full height. Again the open handed, palms-up flourish around the general target. “Self-tied, ivory Marcella bat-wing bow. Ivory Marcella Marol custom fitted shirt with real Paspaley Australian mother-of-pearl buttons – the best in the world. Black jacket with grosgrain lapel facing. I have been able to acquire the necessary bullet-proof carbon nano-fibre insert panels from Garrison Bespoke in Canada. Don't be tempted to undo your tie, letting it hang there over your unbuttoned shirt like in those imbecilic 'glamour' magazine pictures...

“Silk barathea pants with twin silk stripes down sides...” He said next, breathily.

“And... Opera cloak... Opera cloak with tick-blood ombre silk lining. Front and back all made from the very latest out of your late father's laboratories - carbon nano-fibre advanced milspec Fullerene. Weighs nothing, floats in the breeze, flame-proof, heat-proof, bullet-proof, blast-proof.”

Raldi M'Raldi placed his artist's hands around Kate Kane's taught waist, and moved them as if to smooth something crumpled down around her upper hips. “Cummerbund. In pitch-black satin.”

“Why cummerbund? Why not braces – you said this was classical and authentic.”

“Because, Ms. Kane, the so-called guest of honour, our good friend Sheikh Umar al-Kadhi, is a dedicated follower of the likes of extremist ideologues such as Maulana Maududi, and Sayed Qutb, and he thinks it's funny that today's Western folk don't understand the implication of submission that a belt or braces indicates, in the Muslim world. And that is why you will be adopting the admiralty 'sea-rig' East-Asian variation, of satin cummerbund. You make sure you let him see your cummerbund. Take your card out of it or something and give it to him or take his card and place it in the folds making sure that he sees you do it.”

“Hmph.” Was all she could think of responding.

“The Chelsea boot,” he finally added, pretty much as a gratuitous afterthought. “As you know, is not in fact a male shoe – that is to say, a shoe made for males exactly – in the first place... That is, originally. For after all, it was bespoke designed and made by Sparkes-Hall for Queen Victoria.”

*

La Cav was the most exclusive restaurant in New York. Totally unlike all the other prestige places –, the Michelin 3-star places, the famous traditional names, the Hotel flagship fine dining establishments that are spoken about in the media.

La Cav did not do nouvelle cuisine, nor any of the latest fad dishes of celebrity chefs from Paris or anywhere else. La Cav did Brillat Savarin. Not Brillat-Savarin the cheese; but Brillat-Savarin the man. It did actual food.

It wasn't dark inside, it wasn't brightly-lit either; it was the same ombre idea as the lining of Kate Kane's opera cape.

And if you yourself didn't shine in there like an astral gleaming thing you would get lost within the shadows.

She remembered what Raldi M'Raldi had said at the start: 'the most elevated, austere, unforgiving, and defining type of attire is the formal dressing regime for men – and it is also, though few know it, the pinnacle of style refinement for women. It's the one place woman cannot simply get away with being beautiful or naturally attractive in order to blur over their often quite slipshod dressing habits and unsubtle cosmetic sense. Every facial crease will be seen, and if not born from character of life experience, and merely a worn expression, then the overall impression will be of someone dulled-down. Not a hair can be permitted out-of-place in the wrong way. It can be 'out of place' but not in the wrong way. There is a right way.'

Kate Kane had dark fiery red hair, almost charred cherry black, with deep bronze and Burgundy wine in different parts; in glints from arcs of sweeping strands.

And naturally blue eyes like Tiffany Tanzanite crystals.

Integrated in the fabric of her tuxedo Kate Kane had very advanced 'wearables' - those supreme modern high technology trinkets, but these ones developed by own, and her late, father. He had owned a milspec research and development company for a number of years and then retired to work on a vague idea he had formed at the very beginning of his career, to do with energy coherence augmenting, and nano-vectors on a micro-frequency level. The idea came from the acoustic weapons his laboratory had been working on, when he suddenly had a epiphany that in fact all sensory systems were a kind of two-way street: mechanical sensing, and perception. It was never just only mechanical. The results were not always purely externally mechanically-determined.

He thought that if you could adjust the human neural networks by introducing ultra and infra level carrier frequency energies into those sense-associated networks in the brain, then you might be able to have them learn to respond to signals via micro-data patterns augmented by the carrier waves that would otherwise and normally never even be sensed by a human being because they wouldn't reach the necessary thresholds of energy and stimulus.

And he found that you could. And that it applied across all of the senses: sound, light, thermal energy, vestibular, electromagnetic, touch, olfactory sense.

Kate Kane had been the first experimental subject, as it were, and now, she not only could have the assistance of wearable technology that augmented her senses mechanically, but indeed her brain and mind were themselves tuned to expanded levels as the result of using those augmentations.

Yes of course she had money. But way more significantly than that, her father had begun to engage with the most advanced acoustic engineers in the commercial world, people like the world's leading professional DJ's and their studio and stage acoustics engineers, and she had met people who dove-tailed neatly into the direction her father's work had been taking him. And neatly also into the lifestyle that in any case suited her own personality. And they knew so much, these types of people...

Who they were, what they were, who they answered to didn't really matter to Kate – she really liked the English DJ woman with the shock of blonde hair, for instance... She always had some plan or other to do something next. And what else was there in life for a wealthy heiress but a cool other woman to play with and get involved in escapades with. Or 'plans' at any rate.

*

Sheikh al-Kadhi's people had carefully targeted their prey. She would be wined, and dined, caught off guard, then whisked away in a long black limousine, and raped and maybe even never ever heard from ever again. That's what Umar – Sheikh al-Kadhi - did. That's the kind of thing he did. He owned many people in Washington. His Saudi money bought what was for sale, and then he 'did things' to what he had bought.

His standard instructions to his people were explicit – get only the daughters of wealthy, powerful, successful people. There were many people in upper class circles, even in official government, ambassadorial, and security agency, circles who knew about Umar. Producers and agents of major celebrities and touring performers knew about Umar. Umar wasn't even the only one who did the type of thing he did, but he was certainly one of the most smug about it.

And he had the most vicious, hardened, personal bodyguards and security men around him all the time.

As for the individual himself, he was superficially urbane, well-mannered, softly-spoken, seemingly courteous and even generous – so he made it appear. In fact, of course, Sheikh al-Kadhi was nothing but a psychopathic serial killer.

*

Kate Kane walked unhurriedly up the steps of the American neoclassical architecture-styled building which housed La Cav.

Susan Regier, the twenty-four year old blonde daughter of a wealthy advertising agency executive, had just gone up the steps a few moments earlier, alone, not squired, wearing a little black dress under a diamond black mink. She was quickly waved through at the reception desk by the Oriental-looking Private Reservation service. Kate Kane thought the 'Oriental look' thing was probably some homage to Chanel's Chinois Paris siecle.

Kate Kane, on the other hand, was stuck standing in front of the Reception desk with even New York staff suffering a moment's pause as they decided what they were going to do - in their bewilderment - over her apparent acute vortex breaching of the gender codes for formal white tie...

An older Maitre-d' stepped from out of shadows in the tangential vestibule and quickly waved her in with furrowed brows aimed at the Reception staff.

Apart from the fact that there were already unisex urinals in the establishment, he knew it wasn't a traditional dress code violation in any case.

*

Kate spoke to the beautiful young woman in the little black dress and Cesare Paciotti high heels with the little silver sword motif on them: “So – we don't want to hear from short fat ugly people like Henry Kissinger, do we, about what he thinks is an aphrodisiac. We want to hear from people like you. Someone very beautiful, like you.”

Kate looked steadily into the other woman's eyes. What was in there? Who was in there?

The young woman was one of those, at first sight, plain, ordinary, clear-faced, unremarkable persons. Yet as your eyes drifted to her legs you realized she had calves that were just that touch more shapely than the ordinary. And then as your eyes went back up, you noted strong firm thighs without a centimeter of fat on them. Next the tightness of the skirt that only made the wideness of her hips compared with her waist all the more comprehensible to your sensual sensibilities – if these were switched on to a female or to the female form.

Her face was oval and utterly symmetrical, a great rarity when true. Prettily cut light brown hair. Open in demeanor, unguarded eyes, a face of such plain and ordinary balance and lack of any obvious judgmental expression – that it would surely be that of the most arrogant types of women to the least bit hesitating of men. She was clearly someone of poise and perhaps also of substance – which was suggested by the quality and skill of her grooming.

Kate decided she would chose the ladies restrooms to take themselves off to, to fuck. Sue had this soft lilting Bayou accent with those ancient French sibilants. Obviously the sheikh and his team had done their homework. When Kate's deep blue eyes propositioned the lesbian in front of her with that practiced slow controlled look across to the seafood platters with their ice-bedded glistening Cajun Oysters, by the time the other woman's eyes batted sweetly their reply, the superb band had just begun to play a Clifton Chenier-style version of Bon Ton Roulet.

“Laissez le bon ton roulet.” The younger woman said, in a tone of strange exotic femininity, unusual to the often gruff, husky timbre or slingshot twang of the average New Yorker.

“Let the good times roll.” Repeated back Kate Kane to her quarry in standard confident Alpha female English.

“Are you the owner of that hot car I saw drive up out front – at least I think it was you diving it?”

“Yes. The red Veneno.”

“It must be very expensive.”

“It is. About five million dollars worth. Do you like cars – or do you like money?” She said sardonically.

The other woman nodded and there was something, well almost, voracious about it, the way she touched the one side inner lip crease with the tip of her pink tongue, being careful not to contact the outer, MAC red lipstick on any of the fleshy parts of her lips.

“I can make things easy for you, if you like... I mean - what would you do for money? Real money, you know what I mean.”

Kate Kane had also done some homework of her own. She knew the girl needed money and was on the verge of turning to a life she might regret later. The sheikh had picked his target well. She would have been very vulnerable to any even fairly simple move by the Instagram rich-life prince-ling.

Kate thought she almost sensed a kind of anxious or driven heat from off the girl's body, like someone who was working hard, or feeling edgy, or taking a risk.

She felt for her own forearm, sensing that it was cool, and that she was barely out of second gear, really, when it came to these kinds of woman-on-woman seductions. She pulled the cuff of her left arm up a bit and raised her own bit of exposed forearm up close to her face and nose – there was no hint of perfume, fragrance, not that is, in the way of anything from out of a bottle; there was only the chemical, and machine smell of the Alcantara lining that was everywhere inside the Lamborghini, the Nappa leather of the seats, and the strange glue-y or solvent odor of highly polished carbon fiber, which shouldn't have any lingering odor at all you would think, but does.

She held the woman's eyes again firmly. “I can make things real easy, for you...”

There was no way the other woman had of knowing how the high tech harmonic frequency devices were beginning to operate on her, or even that such things were even possible and in existence and actually being used here.

“Give me your hand.” Kate ordered, and she complied readily. Kate held the soft hand in hers and placed a sheaf of notes into it with her other hand. “Here's a few thousand. What I want you to do, is just admit honestly about yourself, you know, what I get right, what I'm on the right track with - if I guess it about you... Okay?”

She just nodded, hardly perceptibly.

“And come with me. Now.

“...I don't want you to feel afraid about anything. I'm going to make it very easy for you. You'll see.”

The band's drummer hit his ending coda with a flourish.

*

(Schodt – First Love. Music begins @ here).

The beauty of real bespoke was well, that it was fully tailor-made for you. When she led the young woman into the cubicle and locked the door behind them, she merely took off her jacket, leaving everything else on, still perfectly ordered and in place, crisp white shirt, bat-wing bow, cummerbund. All she had to do was release the custom black satin fly-over crotch strip between her legs and suddenly her black lace french knickers were exposed, with their easy access to her basic feminine intimacy. Specifically her vulva and her clit.

Susan Regier felt several different sensations run through her body and her being – something unusually elevated, a kind of frisson of shame and yet also of defiance – and a kind of fluttering inside of her. And maybe not just inside, either; she felt certain it was running all over the surface of her skin, and there was a mild rushing in her ears too, like the sound of a crashing ocean not very far away. She had so many daydream months and years behind her already, of thinking about being with another woman. Why was she acting like this?

Now she was here, she didn't even know how it had actually happened. She certainly shouldn't have been embarrassed, nor be blushing so obviously. But she felt her skin flush and getting hot on the surface.

“You'll be all right.” Kate coaxed. “But you know,” she quickly added. “Don't think it's only men who can say all those disgusting little things to you...”

“Like what?” Susan found herself whispering.

“Well like for instance that you're such a hot cunt, aren't you. So listen you dirty hot bitch, I'm going to eat your hot cunt and then I'm going to fuck the piss out of you.”

Kate lifted her right leg up and latched a booted foot up onto the chrome railing that ran alongside the wall of the toilet cubicle. Susan saw her brand new friend's flame red pussy hair spill out through the opened trouser slit, and in that moment her own cunt suddenly twitched independent of her obvious conscious control and then went completely wet, melting its womanly sexual effusion transudate into her own black lace panties and raising its fascinating warmth and effluvium up and out into the open, into the already thick air of the confined cubicle space, making it tang in there with her own personal brand of womanly salty ocean foam and sex.

*

Sheikh Umar growled at his security detail leader who was returning to his boss after making some curt wireless calls: 'Where the fuck is that blonde bitch abida* gone?”

“She went off with this red-haired bitch dressed as a man. They were having sex in the ladies' toilets.”

“What! What the fu-ck...! And there was another woman there dressed as a man?”

“Yes boss she was wearing a tuxedo. Really high class-looking, too. She was at the table where the bitch was at.”

“So? Where are they now? Where in the fucking hell are they now?”

“They're both in their car down in the basement. It's this metallic scarlet-red Lamborghini Veneno, boss. They seem like they are about to drive out.”

“Well,” he fumed. “You fucking get Majid and that dickhead white asshole he has with him, you get them to take the both of them. Track them if you can't stop them, hunt them down! And then when you have them secured and quieted down, you call me back right straightaway. You understand?”

“Yep. No problem.”

Downstairs the geometrical exhaust outlet system on the Veneno roadster 'thrang-thrang- THRANGGGGRRL-ED' into its very own unique and very visceral fuel-and-electronic animated form of mechanical life.

It was like an earthquake forming. Or an alien craft appearing. And then disappearing, as it sprang forward down the driveway and out of the basement car-park into the night. And the two women were gone.

*'abida' – Arabic, a female slave.