Meeting Florizel

Sexual content

12. Florizel

That evening I decided it was time to move things along with Tannhäuser. Before I had time to log in and contact him – I was still walking to the front door – nosey landlord accosted me.

‘Another parcel, Connie. Much bigger this time?’ His statement seemed to end in a question.

‘Really?’ I offered and walked past him. There it was on the post table, brown paper, lots of parcel tape, delivered by hand. I looked round to make sure Snoopy wasn’t watching, grabbed it and ran upstairs. Inside the flat, I flew round like a bird trapped in a chimney, banging into things in my endeavours to find some scissors. I wrestled briefly with the parcel tape. It was never going to give. There were the scissors, on the floor behind my writing table. I should have looked there first. It seems to be where everything ends up when I don’t tidy properly or I fall over a mirror while trying to measure my butt to toe.

Finally! I sat down and carefully extracted the contents. Inside was a jiffy bag with something soft in it, but with a hard end, maybe made from wood, but covered in cloth. The padding made identification impossible. On the bag was a simple message.

<Check emails before opening.>

Should I? Who would know if I cheated? I would, but so what? I pulled at the flap, which was held with a short piece of Sellotape. Beneath the transparent tape was another message, written in small biro letters.

<Venus was a game player. She would check her e-mails, first - as instructed.>

He knows me so well. I threw the taped bag down and fired up my laptop, then e-mails. I opened the bluestockings address created for Goliath. There was one new message. Everything else I’d deleted after the tube-train fiasco.

I opened the mail. No message, just a link to a video attachment called Florizel. I clicked to play. I watched a dark, grainy image of the sole of what looked like a pink ballet shoe. It jerked gently back and forward. The video lasted a few seconds. I checked the bottom of the screen. Seven seconds to be precise. I played it again. It was a ballet shoe. I could be sure. The strings were running off the bottom of the picture. The pictures jerked as if the connection was timing out every second.

Okay. The contents of the package could be a ballet shoe. Cloth with a wooden shaped end. Video entitled Florizel. Oh my God. He hasn’t. Maybe the picture isn’t jerking. Perhaps the connection is fine.

I open the jiffy bag and pull out a ballet shoe, carefully wrapped and filled with tissue paper. I remove the paper and turn the shoe inside out.

There are stains, masses of them, and some biro writing on the tissue paper, difficult to read. I spread the paper and iron it carefully with my hand.

<Here it is. I didn’t video the first time, but then you said you wanted it, and I needed several goes before I got a decent video, so it may be still damp. Now I need to sleep. Phew.

But, before I nod off, we have to organise the next game. Look what Sophie did with a champagne bottle. Video please.

Where is your report on your hand job?

x 

Tanny>

I gasp and sit in a state of shock. Help. How dare he? He dare!

I’ll admit it. I turned the shoe in front of my nose and inhaled deeply. I couldn’t smell feet, or sweat, just his smell, the smell of that damp scarf imprinted on my brain.

I need to reciprocate, but how? I read up on Sophie. Wow. I’m not going to try and video that. I don’t have his address so I can’t send him physical evidence. I’m also troubled by the ballet shoe. Where did he get that so conveniently? Does he share his life with a dancer, a girlfriend who dances, a daughter? I study the shoe carefully. It’s never been worn. I know little about ballet, but I’m sure that within seconds of wearing, the toes must be scuffed. This one has nothing on it, but his. Did he find the paragraph about Florizel’s caprice and then prepare the event? That means he bought a pair of ballet shoes for the moment; on his way home; this evening perhaps? I hope so. Anything else would end our friendship. I would be jealous and would find it unacceptable if he despoiled another woman’s slipper in order to humour me, especially if it were a girl, maybe a daughter or niece who trusts him. That thought disgusts me.

I mail him.

<Great idea and execution. Where did you find the slipper? Was it spontaneous or prepared?

Your idea for the next venture? I haven’t read up on Sophie and champagne, but if it only involves bubbly, I  shall send you the cork. Where to?

How shall I send you a video? I’m not sure I can make a video. I’ll find something … shall we say, suitable, rather than accurate, and arrange everything for Friday evening.

x

Venus>

I’d hedged my bets. A girl has to be careful, before making promises to a stranger.

Why?

 I’m trying to lose the inhibitions instilled in me during a repressed youth, a youth that can be summed up with ‘eegittygit’, whenever body fluids came into play. I used to be horrified by the thought of loss of control, loss of dignity, having a man humping around between my legs, pressing me on to the bed in a state of submission. And now I know I’ll end everything if I find out he has used another woman’s dance shoe for our caprice. Like she cares. But the shoe is brand new so I think I can relax. I check again.

At least champagne is safe – or so I thought.

My chat room logo began to flash at the bottom of the screen. I clicked, opened the window and logged on.

<Hi Venus

I prepared the caprice. I don’t have a woman and certainly not a dancer in my life. I know I would have died of embarrassment when they stormed round the house shouting, ‘Who’s seen my left ballet shoe?’ Do ballet shoes have a left and right? It’s only in your domain that I have the courage to be so uninhibited.

Now it’s payback time, Venus. How will you do a slipper reciprocation?

I’m up for Friday night. Cork, bottle, video, whatever, wherever. Let me know time and place.

x

Flaccid Florizel>

To say I was a bit excited would be to understate the butterflies in my tummy massively. And then I thought about his effort, on my behalf. Poor love. He must be exhausted. I mail him back.

<Once a king, always a king, but once a knight is enough ...

Poor dear Tanny. A Venerable effort for your Venus.>

I hope he doesn’t ask where I learned the knight doggerel. Graffiti on a toilet wall at university. I couldn’t be bothered to walk around a huge quadrangle to the nearest women’s toilet, so I darted into the men’s traps in the engineering department. I made a habit of it thereafter. There were some splendid poems, much subtler than the stuff we girls produce. I memorised the best, invested in a marker pen and improved the quality our side.

Thinking back, it was the only creative thing I did, before meeting Tannhäuser.

No reminiscing, girl. Time for action if I’m to have a worthy caprice for Friday.

I thumb through the little black book. I underline ‘fouteur’, then look it up in a decent dictionary. Another mail was soon on its way.

<Dear Tannhäuser,

Or should I call you De La Pine, Venus’s court painter, ‘whose glory as a painter was hugely increased by his reputation as a fouteur, for ladies that had pleasant memories looked with a biased eye upon his fêtes galantes merveilleuses?’

Fouteur! Page 155. Will you be my fouteur? And the Merveilleuses scandalized Paris with dresses and tunics modelled after the ancient Greeks and Romans, cut of light or even transparent linen and gauze.

So, you naughty little fouteur à pantoufle. When will you present yourself in your (wonderful)  Merveillueses and show me your magnificent jet(er)?

XX

Adoring Aphrodite>

I had ignored his request for a video and evidence of my hand job. I knew he wouldn’t let up, so I needed to progress that part of things. His prompt reply made me forget the champers interlude.

<Marianne North Gallery, 15.30, tomorrow. Masks! I’ll have my STD clearance with me. All negative.>

I’d asked the question and he had already worked out a strategy. I like this man. I need him in my team, but having him working in my office would render me useless for the firm.

Now for my strategy.

I need to allow an hour from Angel to Kew Gardens. I e-mail PA.

<Dianne. Please clear my diary for this afternoon. No idea how, but you will manage.>

I could have predicted the reply.

<May one ask why –  in case one is asked by her upstairs?>

Never mind her upstairs or the CEO for that matter. I knew Dianne was fishing, and not in a subtle way. I reply with the truth.

<Make something up. It will be more credible than the truth.>