The Rescuer Ch. 01

Once the coast falsely felt clear to her roommate, a pale shaking hand lifted up the dining car's window shade, to reveal a sparkling brightly lit fountain so very far below them.

"I took so long on our way up here because I was actually enjoying myself for a change! This entire place isn't all just an illusion built for no purpose! See! The three train dining cars are all stretched out between the two floors of the skyway between the two buildings! We're actually sitting on the fourth floor, invisibly hanging behind darkened glass windows, and above all the shops! The moment I saw the light of the light of a real sunset shining on the tablecloths, I knew exactly where I was! You can't fake that!"

The conductor averted his face and smoothly slid into the seat the rude couple had just left. He carefully used his own shaking hand to raise up the other table's shade until it exactly matched what Keeley had done. But he exhibited both the traditional grace and judgement, of both his home country and his position, and never said a word to any of them. He only moved back towards the 'front' of the train, repeating the same effort at every table, whether they were occupied or not.

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Keeley was so glad the rest of their dinner was eaten in silence.

Moment by moment, all three of the dining cars began to quickly finish filling up. Eventually the rude couple's table was the only empty place she could see from her seat. The conductor sat every group, personally, and amicably chatted equally with either the corporate guests or the general public diners.

That they were purposefully being given extra privacy, as long as possible, was obvious to all of them.

Finally, a group of six men where coming up the aisle, and being directed towards the last space available. Five of them were very young, nondescript, and rather nerdy looking. Only the sixth man seemed to be looking at the people already enjoying their meals, instead of talking rather loudly about some rather obscure equations.

But as soon as they all drew near enough to Shelly... one by one of the younger men went thru the stages Keeley was so familiar with... from dancing with the blonde at the strip club for so many years.

Surprise. Shock. Amazement. Desire. Lust. Hopefulness. Realism. Hopelessness. Envy.

Then, of course, more Lust.

As the young men all tried to sit down at once, they jostled for the seats with the best view of the Shelly. Nary a one gave herself a single glance. Usually, at least one man among such a group preferred redheads, but not apparently this time. Only the older man smiled warmly at her, but he then gave Shelly an odd sort of nod of respect and recognition.

Apparently he didn't know who she really was or her infamous reputation... it seemed to be just a sincere acknowledgement of her beauty and spirit... and he obviously wanted nothing more than having already just seen her sitting there.

The smile Shelly gave him in return, as he seated himself directly opposite of her in the outermost aisle seat, made her overall appearance even more beautiful. It was just such a shockingly honest expression, it looked so unaccustomed on her face.

The gentleman was in his late fifties, or early sixties, and still possessed a wonderful head of full gray hair. Just a few shades off what her favorite customer had at his so much younger age. Fit, tall, lean, and utterly confident in himself. Tolerant of his brash yet awkward younger charges, in a way Keeley wasn't sure she could be for very long.

College age guys at the strip club always gave her the worst time.

All handsy, and full of expectations of something no dancer would ever willingly give them. Unless the girl was truly desperate, and willing to lose her job, if such an exchange ever got found out. The older man winced, the moment a forbidden tablet flickered to life, and was placed on the tablecloth. But true to his skill of being in the right place at the right time, the conductor was already standing behind the young engineer powering it up.

"Young man, this place is for our paying guests, and your own coworkers trying to get a break from their duties. I take it, after a solid week of trying, you're still no closer to solving the little extra credit problem I set for all six of you next door? You won't get far in life, or especially in this company, if you don't ever take a true break and look around you. I don't think your group's current trouble, solving the dilemma, is that much of a mystery to me. Put that... thing... away and just eat your meal for once. Talk about something else besides work for a change. Do you understand me? Do you ALL understand me?"

The young engineer's face went even brighter red in shame, once he realized that Shelly was staring right at him, too. He rather contritely hid the tablet back inside his jacket. The conductor smoothly turned to their table next, and addressed them quietly, with no sign of his momentary irritation still visible on his face.

"As you can see, we are already rather full tonight. I like to always keep at least one table completely ready for our next guest, just in case someone shows up unexpectedly. If you like, I have a porter waiting at the end of the last car, ready to take you to another location for your desserts. Now thanks to our youngest engineer, on the house, of course."

Shelly had a sudden mischievous smile on her face, as she gratefully accepted the conductor's gloved hand in helping her to rise up. The remarkable dress only took a few expert tugs to get the burgundy cloth to settle back into place. The five young men at the table took the conductor's advice, to 'look around them for a change,' quite literally.

But the blonde had a different idea. She took one step towards the kindly old experienced English gentleman engineer, and leaned down at her waist, to give him a careful and grandfatherly kiss on his forehead. Not a single bit of lipstick was left as evidence, but the man certainly got an extremely close up view of all of her charms.

Oddly, once Shelly stood back up straight, the equally matched pair shared the exact same expressions again. Then they parted with even broader smiles than they'd had greeted each other with the first time. Leaving the tables, swaying side to side as only Shelly could, commanded the attention of the entire train car's compliment of guests. The conductor rather atypically gestured for her boyfriend to follow next.

Keeley blushed, as the sudden interest of the entire table across the aisle shifted, and was being focused on her. But she was most startled by the expectant look the sitting gray haired gentleman was giving her now.

It was no more of an overtly sexual expression than he had given Shelly. It wasn't that he was expecting her to say anything, or show some outrageous burst of wit. He was just waiting, for her to do something, that she didn't yet know what it was.

Keeley could actually feel the looks of the other younger men all over her body, as she slid as gracefully as she could away from the window and towards the aisle. The leers were something she was used to at the club, but never liked to feel in public. The green silk of her dress slid against her nipples, highlighting them for a moment, as the fabric stretched tight as she twisted to swing her long legs out into the walkway.

Her small breasts shook a little after the hem was tugged back down and, finally, one of the young engineers gave her the expression she had come to depend on so much at the club. Seated by the window behind the gray haired man, the twenty year old gulped deeply, suggesting that maybe at least that boy preferred redheads after all.

While Shelly had been there, it was sort of like the moon high in the bright day lit sky, barely visible in it's doomed competition against the sun. Now that all the men, and a few women, in the crowded train car were looking up at her, Keeley felt like the moon on a dark night, anxious to scurry away and hide behind the clouds.

But still that secret little thrill she got every time she stepped out on stage... before she began to dance and take her clothes off... would easily give Keeley the confidence she needed to be able to walk proudly down the same path the blonde had just taken.

Her best smile went to the gray haired man, then a subtle wink at the blushing younger man against the window, before she stepped out in front of the conductor as they made their way to the end of the third car.

There was no immediate sign of her roommates... even after she stepped 'outside' and held onto the railing past the car's open door... not that she spent that much time looking for them.

The amazing architectural illusion that greeted her on this side of the building was no less beautiful than the little English resort village, but for some reason it was far far less captivating. The differences between the two vistas was almost as profound as those between the garden fountain park and the hedge maze.

What lay before her was the perfect setting for a romantic French movie.

A small sea side village, with the same number and kinds of shops as the one in the other half of the office complex. Because of the hour though, perhaps even more people were going in and out of the shoppes? Where before there had been a train turntable, this time the tracks left the little double station and went straight thru the heart of the little village. After they went past the few small houses, the rails turned into the rather obviously failed illusion of a tree filled forest, and abruptly tried to vanish much too quickly.

Keeley's shoulders itched, and she turned to look thru the heart of the cars and back at the English side, only to find the gray haired man had completely turned around in his seat.

Staring at her.

Expectantly.

Keeley immediately turned away and looked at the magnificently detailed illusion of the French seaside market square... and tried her very best to honestly open up her mind to it's message... but it again failed to capture her heart.

In direct competition with what she had so instantly fallen in love with, it wasn't even a close contest.

Not knowing why, she turned back towards the train cars, and could only shrug her shoulders and shake her head at the gray haired man. He nodded sadly in an agreeable response, but kept looking at her. Puzzled, Keeley almost jumped when the conductor's hand softly rested on her shoulder. His voice was just as kind and calm as it had been before.

"You see it too, don't you? We both want to know why you feel that way. In your own words. If you please?"

Keeley stared carefully at each French shop. Each cobblestone pathway. The fake trees filling up the distance. The carefully placed lighting. The breeze still felt like the sea, and it felt right that it was a bit warmer. The false sky above still looked just as convincing. Everything was perfect.

Yet something was wrong.

Terribly wrong.

Slowly, very slowly, she tried to find the right words to say, and they came out as a question instead.

"Why... why didn't you have the same person... the same man... design this part of your second building, too?"

The conductor coughed a little bit, and carefully cleared his throat. There was still no sign of her roommates, as if they had been deliberately spirited out of the way for a few minutes.

"It was kind of a one-time only opportunity. We were so lucky to get him to help with the original half of the project in the first place. He actually refused when we came back, much later, and finally offered him the second half of the job. But he'd already moved on to other projects. You see, we thought this second side would be good practice for us. A team building thing. All the different parts of our company, from all three countries, meeting here and learning to work together to create this second illusion. We should have had all the raw talent and skill to pull it off. Easily. And at least in theory, we do. We already had HIS example, on the English side, to go by. After all, how hard could it be?"

The little chuckle was more than a little self deprecating. Keeley instantly felt that he had been the one directly responsible. It had to have been his decision, for the corporation to take on the design of the French side of the skyway bridge in-house. Carefully, she looked back thru the dining cars at the English side, and marvelled again at the little slice she could see thru the last car's end window.

Even from here, the intentionally picture perfect framing of what she could see thru the glass, eased her heartache again in an unique way. Before tonight, only her nights with her favorite customer seemed to relieve that constant pain these days. The pull the little resort on the hill had on her emotions was just that incredibly strong.

There was no real reason for it.

Or was there?

The kind hand patted her shoulder again, encouraging her to speak whatever words came to her next.

"That place over there, it doesn't exist in the real world, does it? It's not a copy? I mean, there isn't some famous resort village out there, that everyone else that has actually gotten to visit England knows about. Is there?"

The chuckle was even warmer this time, and she took that for a no. The unexpected respectful silence the Conductor gave her let her true feelings cut loose in public for what had seemed like years. With her lower lip trembling, Keeley tried to set free her unvarnished thoughts as quietly as this sudden burst of unrestrained passion was going to allow her to.

"But it SHOULD exist! I mean, if things were right with the world, a place like that would have been built back in the day! It's not perfect! It wasn't designed to be! But because of that, it just feels so real! One person's vision, of what all three of us agree, had to have existed, somewhere, in the past. A tribute, of sorts, about how wonderful it would be, to just stumble across it unchanged, unscathed and unspoiled by time and modern life! Am I right? Is that the real difference?"

The gray haired man still half sitting down in the middle car finally nodded at her, as if even from this far away, he agreed with every word she had just said so quietly. Or maybe he could just read the emotions that were animating her face so fiercely at the moment. Turning away from the other village was so hard to do, but Keeley suddenly found that she had more words to say to the man now obviously only play acting as a conductor. He was clearly more than just that in the huge international business.

"This side FEELS like it was designed by a committee! Too many voices! Too many ideas! Too much attention to every smallest detail! Too little thought about the whole feel of the place! Nothing is really wrong! It's just not RIGHT! Why did the original designer really refuse to take on the second half?"

There wasn't a chuckle this time, but the slight squeeze on her shoulder said it all.

"He said that he simply couldn't do it justice. At least not easily. It would have felt too much like 'real' work to him. Originally, he seemed almost glad when we decided to take on the second project ourselves. When we asked him to come back, and he saw what we had attempted to do, he said that he simply wasn't the one to finish bringing it to life. I've gotten... a lot... of heat for this mess that isn't a mess. So we cut it's budget, and now we mostly just use corporate and private volunteers, to help figure out to do with it. It's become a good test mule though, to see what both our newer and older employees can do, working together. Deciding how they would do it, what technology they would pick out, whether they can work with a team, or are better off tackling things alone. It took our Board of Directors a few years to acknowledge it's usefulness for that. So I am mostly off the hook now, and just get ribbed about it, if I'm ever about to make a similarly overconfident bone headed decision. I just get so frustrated with some of my fellow executives, whenever they say that this side is fine now! That after all the work we've put into it, the two sides are equals? We are a design, technology and real estate development company after all! People hire us because we can produce THAT, not THIS!"

Only after the conductor had pointed emphatically and appropriately at the two halves of his corporate headquarters, did he seemed embarrassed about his own uncharacteristic outburst. But he quickly sighed, settled down, and continued quietly.

"I just wanted to hear again, from someone objective, that can see what has still been bothering just a few of us for so many years. Thanks for doing that for me."

Keeley blushed and nodded, and looked for her roommates in the market square's growing small crowd again. As if by some magic signal, a man dressed as an Art Deco era French hotel porter appeared out of a shop with them firmly in tow. Shelly was smiling and talking with the young man teasingly. Seth was trying not to too obviously stare back at the two gorgeous French women, both younger corporate types, holding dresses up to their already elegantly decked out and curvy bodies. The dark haired women weren't his normal type, but Seth's always wandering eyes had gotten a lot bolder lately, especially if he didn't think she could observe him.

Maybe all the alcohol they'd had so far tonight was catching up to him, too? The conductor noticed the leering behavior as well, making Keeley want to quickly change the subject.

"So, what are you going to do next? Surely you're not expecting me to be able to fix this? I mean, maybe if I had seen this side of the complex first? Or if the street below had both a French and an English side? And I had walked up those stairs thru it's matching hotel? Maybe I might have felt differently about all those the bistros and shops out there, and this floor's illusion trying so hard to make me believe its all out of doors, too?"

The conductor coughed, and tried to explain without sacrificing too much of his pride again.

"The older gentleman, suffering in the middle of that little troublesome group of young engineers, has been trying to convince me all week of what you finally just did so elegantly. We'll just have to find the right man, or this time a woman, who has just as good of a dream for this side of the project. I don't think it would take too much to correct our unknown mistakes. We wouldn't have to start all over from scratch. As an entire company we are rock solid on all the technology, materials, techniques, skills and personnel. Sometimes, you just have to find the one single perfect person, with the right sort of personal dream, to make things all work out for the best."

The soft pat on her shoulder was even more warm and comforting this time. Keeley felt her entire body shudder a little bit, as some more of the long pent up tension and worry left her, upon hearing his last words.

"Why don't you just go and enjoy your desserts with your friends. You don't have to add this place to your list of worries. Just try to enjoy yourself the rest of your night, ok?"

Keeley looked back into the middle of the train, and got one more smile from the gray haired man, before he finally returned to his dinner. She accepted the gentle push towards the downward ramp from the conductor. Her friend's were more than ready to go on, and the moment she thought of them only in that way, she turned back to look back up at the executive.

He obviously knew from the other words, that he couldn't have helped but overhear at their table, that it was her long term boyfriend coming to join her. But in sending her on her way, he deliberately hadn't referred to Seth that way. He also clearly didn't think of Shelly and the sometimes uncaring idiot as the two halves of a potential couple either.