The Girl With Pink Hair: Pt. 03

As ever, any resemblance to people living or dead is purely co-incidental.

Constructive criticism is gratefully received.

Recap

In "The Girl With Pink Hair: Pt 2" we followed Elena Kowalski and Jessica Calamar over a period of three days as they explored their new relationship, one of an ordinary Sapiens entangled (Jess' description) with a maiden of The Folk.

Elena learned more about the hidden world of the Folk. On one occasion Jess and Elena had an eerie and unsettling experience when making love. This worries Jess, although she keeps this concern from her new girlfriend.

Amongst the other matters that serve to occupy new lovers, Elena was introduced to Sylvie and Shawna, Jess' other housemates, and wowed them with her cooking. Jess - being a spy - met her handler, and all may not be well in the world of covert operations.

On the last day, Jess partnered Elena to a ball at the college where they met Merry, Alison and Sanjay (AKA The Unholy Trinity), who are mightily impressed with Elena's new girlfriend. The episode finishes with Jess inviting Elena to move in with her, and Elena accepts.

Coming to terms

July

The Loft

When Elena exited the house in Exmoor Place for what was likely to be the last time, she turned and looked back at the ever open front door. The house was quiet. Anyone at work had already left and everyone else wouldn't surface until lunchtime - if then.

Her eyes drifted from the cracks in the window frames to the peeling paint of the front door. In the hallway, threadbare carpet and scuffed skirting boards, dents in the plaster and a solitary lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. It was a considerable list of negatives.

Elena was 28 years old and had spent a considerable chunk of her adult life in this place. Her mother had been horrified on the single occasion she'd come by to drop off some clothes. 'Elena, darling, it's a slum!' Another member of the set of things for Alice Kowalski to disapprove of. A set only exceeded by U. Elena's lips curved.

Back when she was a teenager, Elena had found an old paperback book dating from the 1940s. She'd been fascinated with the yellowing pages and the crackling glue, the slow surrender to entropy.

The details of the archaic plot were long forgotten apart from one scene. A jock snarls at the hapless protagonist, 'If you're so smart, why ain't you rich?' which wasn't so different from her mother muttering under her breath that 'looks will get you further than brains.'

The words from the old book had come back to her repeatedly as she slogged her way through University. According to her c.v. she was one of the cleverest people alive, but that counted for precious little in academia, let alone the grand scheme of things. Her student debt was something she tried not to think about.

She recalled another near apocalyptic row, her father's pursed lips and downcast eyes as the two women of the family exchanged verbal blows over the kitchen table. He knew better than to intervene.

'You're throwing away your God given advantage so that you can learn about things that no-one else will understand or care about!'

'I'm not going to be some air-head clothes horse, Mother!'

'You would be famous, rich! Have your pick of men!'

'And if I don't want any of that?'

Her mother pounded the table in her frustration, unable to comprehend Elena's motives. Her daughter glared back, just about biting down on the words that her mother's anger was driven more by envy than by care for her daughter. And if that was the case then what did it say about her marriage?

Elena sighed deeply. It was a circle that wasn't going to be squared anytime soon. However, if she was going to live with Jess then she was going to have to contribute. She hefted the two suitcases and trudged the short distance to Somerset Street.

Letting herself in with Jess' keys, she stood for a moment in the big hallway, absorbing the space and the quietude. All was seamless integration from the dark red carpet to the muted white-with-a-touch-of-cream paint on the woodwork, the wrought iron balustrade and the plaster mouldings to the light fittings and cornices. She could imagine making a life here with her eldritch companion and her two quirky friends.

Up in the loft, she stowed her few possessions in a couple of drawers and hung some clothes on a rail in a wardrobe, then fell on the sofa and looked up at the clouds through the windows in the ceiling. She felt between, at the focus of the light cone, the outcome of all possible pasts and the genesis of all possible futures.

When she returned to herself sometime later, her thoughts turned to more immediate matters. Even though the damn thesis wasn't complete, and her viva was yet to come, it was time to get a job. 'Obviously', Professor Snape intoned in her head, but what kind of job? One that didn't involve too much thinking. After the last few years, Elena felt all thinked out.

Trawling the web before lunch, she came across a position at the hippy grocery. Her lips quirked as she read the job description, it was so right on it was more a manifesto. She tapped her pen against her front teeth and then decided to drop by the workers' collective.

She looked up again at the sky through the ceiling windows and consulted her phone, discovering that while it wasn't going to get that warm outside, at least it wasn't likely to rain. She dithered over telling Jess what she was doing but decided against. Grabbing a shawl to wrap around her shoulders, she exited the loft, locking the door behind her.

***

Green By Nature

The shop was instantly recognisable and had been a feature of the neighbourhood for years. Boxes of locally grown vegetables sat on the pavement in front of the green and yellow façade. Inside, the wooden shelves were lined with bags of organic pulses and nuts and dried fruit. A small fridge contained vegan substitutes for dairy.

At the till by the entrance loitered a young woman with an awful lot of ink on her exposed skin and a prodigious quantity of metal adorning her face. She looked Elena up and down and decided on the basis of the shawl alone to file her as 'middle class folky'.

Elena smiled at her and asked about the job, whereupon she looked at Elena with poorly concealed incredulity and then scuttled off to the back of the shop. Elena looked at the abandoned till and sighed. It was a wonder they ever made any money, not just because it was against their anarcho-syndicalist principles.

Miss Piercings and Tattoos returned with an older man, perhaps in his late thirties or early forties, with light brown hair thinning on top. He had an impressive number of freckles accenting his blue eyes and their accompanying laugh lines.

"Mike," he said, extending his hand. Elena took it, it was warm and slightly rough with calluses.

"Elena," she replied, making sure the handshake was properly firm.

His lips quirked. "I like a lady with a good grip. Stacy tells me you're here about the job. Forgive me but don't I recognise you?"

Elena shrugged. "I've been a few times. Mainly for herbs and spices and occasionally a few other things."

He nodded and looked down again. "Do you know how to get your hands dirty?"

"Yes," she said confidently. "I've worked holiday jobs from time to time. Fruit picking and stuff."

"Mm," he said non-committally, putting his hands on his hips. "How long would you be planning to be around?"

Plucking a figure from the air, "At least a year, if it works out," she said.

"And the shop ethic?"

Elena was baffled. "I beg your pardon?"

"We're anti-capitalist, pro-vegan, and anti-discrimination of any kind. One world."

Mike was not smiling now. His young comrade was watching Elena with her head on one side, waiting to see if she could pass the test.

"Um, I don't have a problem with that," she offered.

He grunted acceptance. "Shop hours are 8:30 to 5:00. You'll work five days a week. We're open seven days a week and we rotate the days off, there's no extra pay for working the weekend. Training is on the job; probation is four weeks. Pay is basic I'm afraid."

"That's okay." Elena smiled and his face softened very slightly. Stacy's did not.

"What did you read?" he asked.

Elena mentally revised her assessment of him. He'd guessed that she'd been a student and even in Britain, not many people knew that you might study at University, but formally, you 'read'.

"Astrophysics."

Both Mike and Stacy's eyebrows went up and they reviewed her afresh, in Stacy's case rather sceptically. The rings in her eyebrows clinked gently as she frowned. She had a ferocious frown.

"Discrimination of any kind, right?" Elena said sardonically.

Mike laughed. "Touché! Alright, can you start tomorrow?"

"Yep."

"Okay, nice to meet you, Elena. Be here at 8am tomorrow so I can show you around."

***

"You're what?" laughed Jess when Elena told her what she was going to be doing.

"I've done rather a lot of thinking in the last few years. I'd like to do something that doesn't involve much in the way of thinking at all. Now that I'm a spy's moll."

Jess looked at her. "Gangsters have molls. Spies have, uh ... err ... "

Elena put her fists on her hips. "Yes?"

"Floozies?" Jess said, doubtfully.

"I'm no-one's floozy!"

There was a short pause and Elena eyed Jess. "Unless ... of course ... there was a need ... say, in spy training ... for some role play ..."

Jess's eyes were out on stalks as her girlfriend let her voice drop into Marlene Dietrich territory. Elena turned to look, heavy lidded, over her shoulder. "Or we could just cut straight to the seduction."

"Fuck seduction! Come here, you!"

Elena walked towards her, hips swaying, grey eyes fixed on her.

'Now who has the super-power?' thought Jess.

Elena stood close to Jess and slowly undid the buttons of her blouse and pushed the garment from her shoulders. The she pushed Jess to sit on the sofa and knelt in front of her.

Naked from the waist up, Jess stroked Elena's hair as her lover sucked on a plump nipple. She took an experimental sniff.

Elena left off her ministrations to look up at her. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to work out what kind of perfume you might use."

"From smelling my hair."

"Got to start somewhere," Jess said, defensively.

"You're strange, you know that?"

"I am of the Folk!"

"That's all very nice, but you're still weird. Good job you have someone who loves you."

Jess took Elena's face in her hands and kissed her hard. "Better do! I don't put out for just anyone!"

***

By the end of her first day Elena knew she could not only do the job with her eyes shut, provided she could come to understand the idiosyncratic filing system, but she could probably offer some suggestions on how to improve things. However, she thought that advice from the astrophysics girl might not be terribly well received.

She started to subtly dress down, eschewing perfume and make-up, tying her hair back in a ponytail and covering it with a scarf; less Dr Kowalski, glamorous cosmonaut, more Polish land girl, wearing soft flannel men's shirts with the sleeves rolled up.

She spoke when she was spoken to and didn't try too hard to fit in. The initial suspicion from her co-workers gradually subsided and one or two of them started to include her in conversations. The revelation that she had a girlfriend was particularly well received and Elena struggled not to laugh. Now if she could just pluck up the courage to let her underarm hair grow ...

***

Seyfert Building

The same day as Elena's visit to the grocery store, a woman called Kate Livingstone sat down to one of her regular briefings in an anonymous building near the centre of one of the less impressive conurbations of the Eastern Counties. She often thought of Douglas Adams when she came here.

A line of windows along one side of the beige meeting room let in daylight and offered dispiriting views over the nearby industrial estate.

The temperature had ticked up a degree or two and she was sweating a little after trotting up the stairs. (Kate had an instinctive distrust of lifts.) She shucked off the jacket, hung it on the back of the chair and sat down. Apart from Kate, there were three other women at the table, one senior and two junior analysts. She opened a manila folder and found herself looking at a sketch of a young blonde woman. Inwardly she groaned.

"Who's this?"

"We don't know yet. She popped up a couple of days ago at 5.5."

Kate pursed her lips. That was a significance rating that meant this woman was important. Or was going to be.

"What do we know about her?"

One of the junior analysts bravely piped up. "She's appeared several times over the last couple of years at between 2 & 3. Just brief spikes and then she'd disappear back into the noise. About a week ago she became entangled with Jessica Calamar."

"I know that name," Kate muttered.

With a few thousand individuals in mainland Britain and only a couple of hundred in the whole of East Anglia, the Folk clustered in families that were largely well known - especially if you had access to the breeding project database. Kate knew of Jessica as precocious Talent with excellent genes. She frowned.

The other junior analyst pushed a photo of a young woman in a rather revealing waitress's uniform across the desk.

Kate grunted. "So?"

"She's working locally."

"Bit off her patch, isn't it?" Kate mused. Weren't the Calamars south of London? Then again, no reason for Jessica to hang around her parents, but London would have been the obvious choice, surely? Thumbing through the file, her eyebrows rose. Jessica Calamar was very definitely here for some other reason than waitressing.

"But no idea why this other ... mundane?" she raised her eyebrows at the analyst, who nodded hurriedly in confirmation, "should have become relevant all of a sudden?"

"No. Her future is opaque."

Kate hissed in frustration. The data sifters lived in the world of half-truths and possibilities. It was agony to make any kind of firm statement beyond saying that the sun would rise tomorrow. Probably. Her forehead creasing in annoyance, she missed the next thing the analyst said. "What?" she snapped.

"So is Jessica Calamar's."

Kate was silent for several moments. Then, "Why did you not tell me that to begin with?"

The senior analyst quailed.

Abruptly Kate stood. "Find out who she is and everything there is to know about her. I want it on my desk yesterday."

There was a murmur of 'Yes Ma'ams' behind her as she strode rapidly from the room, already fishing her phone from her pocket.

***

August

The Loft

It was end of Elena's second week at the co-op. She was not used to being on her feet all day and the stairs to the loft had nearly been the end of her.

"Hi honey, I'm home," she shouted as she let herself in. The blinds were down, and the lights were dimmed. Elena frowned. Then Jess emerged from the shadows behind the mezzanine stairs and Elena's jaw dropped.

Her eyes glittered with laser-like intensity and her lips were a vivid scarlet slash. Her left hand held a bottle of something sparkling and the right trailed two flutes. Elena swallowed hard, because beyond a basque in some silk-like silver material, and some thigh high black stockings, Jess was wonderfully, thrillingly naked. She sashayed, slowly, hypnotically towards Elena.

Some low strings started up, and a saxophone played a short riff before the old master started to sing.

I've got you, under my skin. I've got you, deep in the heart of me.

So deep in my heart, that you're really a part of me.

I've got you, under my skin.

The champagne and glasses were deposited on the table so smoothly that Elena hardly saw Jess do it. It was the eyes; they didn't allow her to see anything else.

A subtle perfume reached her, some musky, spicy scent that was as if a perfumier had taken Jess's natural aroma and enhanced it with witchy powers. It was already doing profound things to Elena's hindbrain.

"You don't-"

"Shh," whispered Jess. "Yes. Yes, I do."

She sauntered around behind Elena and then stepped up so close that Elena could feel her heat. She breathed in Elena's ear and Elena shivered. A finger came over Elena's shoulder and stroked across her lips. The carnal scent was achingly familiar.

"Kneel," her lover commanded, and Elena sank down obediently.

"Close your eyes."

She felt rather than heard Jess come round to stand in front of her. Then a gentle pressure on the back of her head urged her forward and she was on familiar ground. Her tongue snaked out to dive between the slick labia. The perfume was amazing, perfectly complementing the scent of desire. Jess was already very aroused, Elena could feel it in the slight shudders in her thighs, the steady drip of her juice into Elena's mouth, the indefinable glow that Elena had come to expect in their lovemaking, burning steadily brighter.

She abandoned any pretence of subtlety and around about the time that the brass section blared out the crescendo, Jess was jerking in the throes of her climax as Elena lashed her clit. The song came to a close, and Elena sat back on her ankles and opened her eyes to find Jess staring down at her with an intense expression.

She smiled lazily up at her partner. "What?"

"I don't deserve you."

"What's that got to do with anything? There's little enough happiness in the world. Grab it with both hands when it comes along and don't let go." She stood up and put her hands on Jess' waist. "You can have me later. And forever if you want. But for now, didn't I see you carrying some fizz?"

***

Later they lay in a tangle of sheets, Elena behind Jess, spooning in gentle tactile eroticism, her hand encompassing Jess' breast, idly circling the nipple with the pad of her index finger.

Jess had discovered that, like Elena, the nape of her neck was a particularly effective erogenous zone. A fact that Elena exploited ruthlessly. A light kiss. A small lick. A warm breath.

Jess made a rumbling sound and squirmed a little, enjoying the friction of skin on skin. "Now if you were a man, I'd expect to be prodded below stairs about now," she murmured. "But as you're not, I don't know if you're horny or not."

Elena huffed a laugh. "Witchy powers not working today?"

"I'm all distracted. I need something tangible."

She felt Elena's hand snake between them and then come up to trail her fingers across her lips. Her tongue stole out to sample the sensual flavour. Elena slipped two fingers into Jess' mouth and let them rest there as Jess gently sucked them. The feeling of Jess' tongue caressing her fingers rapidly ramped up Elena's excitement and Jess moaned in sympathy.

Abruptly she twisted to face her lover. Their lips met and tongues slipped back and forth in a slow erotic duel. Breaking for a moment, clear grey eyes stared into blue and then Elena gently rubbed her nose against Jess'.

"What are you thinking?"

"Not thinking so much as wallowing in your feelings."

"Yeah? What's that like?"

Jess was silent for a minute and then said quietly, "Like swimming in the sun."

***

Before setting off to work early the next morning, Jess gambled that it would not rain. Unfortunately, dark clouds loured over the city from lunchtime onwards and now, as the downpour dripped into her eyes and her collar as she cycled along, she was regretting that wager.