London Harmony: Squid Hugs (5 page)

I slapped her arm playfully. “Hey, I wear heels almost every day lady.”

She rolled her eyes and explained drolly with the corners of her lips twitching into a smile, “You can hardly call those cheap knockoffs, heels.  I'm talking about real heels.”

We stopped when we realized everyone was grinning at us.  Paya said, “You two make such a cute couple.”

My heart fluttered.  Jen came to our rescue as she rebuffed, “We're not a couple.  I just can't have my best mate running around like an unkempt ragamuffin.”

I crinkled my nose in a 'so there' gesture and stuck my tongue out at the women.  Amy rolled her eyes and focused off to my left.  I knew that meant she was looking directly at me as she chirped out, “Just keep telling yourselves that.”

I got the last laugh when I said, “Would you look at that, lunchtime is over.”  I grinned evilly.  “I have to get these two back to work before they turn into pumpkins.”  I collected my hugs and smiled at Amy and Liza just being too cute as they kissed goodbye.  Then we were heading back to the office.

I had just barely sat down when Jen was buzzing me.  I couldn't resist teasing, “Did you miss me that much?”

She didn't missed a beat as she quipped back, “Yes, terribly.  When you are done being full of yourself, I have some delivery men down here with the new mixer board.  They need someone higher up than a mere receptionist to check for damage and sign off on the delivery.”

Oooo... I knew that tone.  She was not amused.  A not amused Jen is a dangerous animal.  I could imagine the delivery men fidgeting under her glare.  I grinned and assured her, “On my way.”

Once I got there, sure enough, there were two men were trying hard not to notice the intense scrutiny Jen had them under as they leaned against the large wood crate they had up on a dolly.  I gave Jen a grin and a wink as I passed by, then put on my business face.

I asked them dryly, “Why was I called out of a meeting?”

One man with a clipboard said nervously as he held the clipboard out, “We just needed someone with authority in the building to sign off and verify there was no shipping damage to the equipment.”

I cocked an eyebrow and said plainly, “Miss Harrison here has the authority, did she not convey that to you, gentlemen?”

He fidgeted, still holding the clipboard out to me, trying to explain, “But, she's just a receptionist and this unit is worth three hundred thousand pounds.”

I nodded in agreement. “Yes, just a receptionist who coordinates thousands of shipments a year of millions of records, CDs, and marketing paraphernalia for one of the most influential record labels in Europe.”  Then I looked back at her and said to the man with my eyes wide, “But she does have pretty shoes.”

I grabbed the clipboard and then looked at the man.  He pointed to the bottom of the shipping invoice and said, “Sign there.”

And I shook my head, I was just being mean now, but he marginalized my Jen so he deserved everything I dished out.  “Come on now, open the crate so I can inspect the shipment.”

His eyes shot open and asked in disbelief, “You want us to open it?”

I nodded and rolled my eyes and said like it was obvious, “How can I properly inspect the equipment and certify there was no shipping damage if I can't actually see the equipment?”

He looked ready to pop a cork as he asked, “Is there a manager or someone we can speak to?”

I paused and just looked at the man.  He cocked an eyebrow and asked in dismay, “You're the manager aren't you?”  I nodded impassively and he sighed and looked over at the other man and said with a sigh, “You heard the lady.”

They took out small pry bars and pulled the side off of the crate.  I pulled aside one of the foam panels and whistled as I ran my fingers lovingly over the pristine EQ-9600 with the touch panel sliders.  She was a thing of beauty.  The guys were going to have an equalizer-gasm over this.

I smiled and signed off on the clipboard and handed it to the man.  Then before he could say anything I turned to walk off, calling back over my shoulder, “Miss Harrison can show you where to unload it.”

Jen was beaming at me as I passed her.  I tried hard not to grin as I heard her say in an authoritative tone, “Right then blokes, get her buttoned back up and I'll show you to the back.”

A few minutes later Jen was buzzing.  I answered coyly, “This is Zilrita, how may I be of service?”

She was chuckling at my antics as she shared, “You were bloody brill Zil.  I don't get to see your vindictive side much, just promise to never aim it my way.”

I was grinning hugely now as she chuckled out, “I almost died. 'How can I properly inspect the equipment and certify there was no shipping damage if I can't actually see the equipment?' That was priceless.  I didn't think you had a mean bone in your body.”

She said my part with an almost perfect American accent.

I grinned as I shrugged to the universe and stated a fact, “Nobody fucks with my best friend.”

She chuckled again then said, “They say the technicians will be by tomorrow afternoon to begin the tear-down of the old unit and installation of the new.  It should take just a day or two.”

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful and I spent most of the time familiarizing myself with Hector's system and determined what needed to be addressed first.

We waited until all the employees left before locking up.  I glanced over to the other side of the building and all of the club's lights and signs were powering up as Liza and Ronnie prepared for the night.  Jen bumped my shoulder. “Remember, we have the banquet tonight.  Just drop me at home and then go get yourself ready.”  She added as a reinforcement, “Dress not trousers.”

I rolled my eyes at the woman as I mounted up in my car.  “I got it, I got it.  Now get in lady.”  Crap, I had almost forgotten again.

She sighed and teased, her eyes sparkling with mirth, “Bloody hell, I'm going to have to dress you myself aren't I?”

I stuck my tongue out at her, then pulled out onto the street, and said in an imperious tone, “I'm perfectly capable of dressing for a banquet myself, thank you very much.”

The banter continued until I pulled us into an older, posh neighborhood.  The cobblestone street was lined on either side with ornate brick, stone, or wrought iron fences, and a center strip of ancient oaks split the lanes like a mini parkway.  Each yard was easily ten or fifteen times the size of the one from my childhood home.  They were well kept and manicured, looking like they belonged in storybooks.  With their little guest cottages and coach houses that made them timeless.

I turned into a drive that had an ornate drive gate between large stone columns that melted into the old stone fence.  I punched in Jen's date of birth on the security pad and the sturdy wrought iron gate, which had a big H for Harrison on it, swung slowly open.  Her family home.  And what a home it was.  I drove around the roundabout and past the main doors of the manor and stopped in front of the old stone coach house with its thatched roof.

Like a lot of well-to-do families, their home was multigenerational.  But when Jen wanted some privacy when she became an adult and wanted to move out, she came to a compromise with her mother.  She would live in the apartment above the coach house which was used by servants in a bygone era.

She could have chosen the guest cottage, but the term cottage was a misnomer as it had three bedrooms and two floors.  Far too much room for a single woman.  So her mother had the coach house renovated and Jen has a gorgeous living space that makes most condos look bland.

She leaned over the center console and hugged me, I held on an extra heartbeat before releasing her, and then she opened the door and reminded me again, “Seven.”

I crinkled my nose and waved it off. “I know, I know, lady.”

She chuckled and headed up the stone staircase to the second floor of the building.  I took a moment to admire what the stairs did for her calves before driving off toward home.

I rushed home then got dressed in a knee length leather and lace dress.  I loved the string corset on this one as the strings and fringe on the dress were a dark purple that seemed to make the dress glow.  Add some black tights and knee high spiked black heels with purple laces, and I was satisfied with my attire.  I did a little pirouette since I was feeling silly.

I did up my hair in a knotted bun and secured it with one black and one dark purple chopstick.  Then went about doing my makeup.  I toned it down since this was a semi-formal occasion, but I did finish it off with a dark purple liquid gloss over black lipstick to match the dress.

Oh, I almost forgot I picked something up last month.  I opened a miniature hat box beside the other full sized hatboxes in my closet and took out the tiny black lace bonnet with a dark purple bow on it.  I fastened it to my hair, off center toward the left side.

I grabbed a little black purse with a string strap and started toward the door but hesitated with a smirk.  Jen was too worried about what I was going to wear, so I needed to poke fun at her.  I rummaged in the back of the closet and pulled out my black lace parasol.  I grinned at myself and headed out to pick her up, throwing a black loose knit wrap over my shoulders.

It was already dark when I arrived at Harrison Manor.  As I pulled up, I noted that all of Jen's lights were off except her porch light at the top of the steps.  So I parked at the main house instead.  I hopped out and was feeling playful so I popped open the parasol and sashayed to the large front doors as I spun it in my fingers.  There were large windows all around the door, the lower ones we made of a bubbled, flowing glass that obscured the view of the interior.

I pressed the doorbell and heard the familiar deep chimes of some sort of English melody playing.  A moment later, Mr. Harrison himself answered the door.  I had expected their maid, Diana, to answer.  Then I remembered she got off at six.

He paused as I twirled my parasol nervously. “Umm... Hi Mr. H.  Is Jen here?”

He gathered his wits and shook his head as he gave me a small smile.  “Miss Marx, I never quite know what to expect when I see you.”

I wiggled my eyebrows and whispered behind my hand like I were sharing some deep secret with him, “That's sort of the point.”

His smile grew as he retorted, “Indeed.  She's upstairs with her mother, getting ready.  Please come in and have a seat.  Would you like anything?  Tea, coffee?”

I shook my head as I stepped in.  “No, but thank you for asking sir.”

He took my wrap and parasol and placed them on one of the benches by the door.  I grinned, he was such a gentleman.

He lead me away from the formal living room and into a sitting room that the family used when not entertaining guests, it had more of a feeling of family and lived-in-ness than the pristine main room which could double as a small ballroom during formal events.  That room was just for show.

I took a seat on one of the four or five couches arranged around the room and he sunk into an overstuffed chair that had a half empty cup of tea and the newspaper in disarray.  No really, I kid you not, Mr. H really did read a newspaper instead of getting his news online.  It was sort of cool.

He smiled at me and said as he put his reading glasses on and picked up the paper, “You look lovely tonight Zilrita.” His smile became a half entertained smirk as he added, “Unorthodox but lovely.”

I blushed at the compliment.  It took him a while to adapt to my look when I first started coming around after Jen befriended me.  I don't think he fully approves of my look, but he is an adaptable sort, and after I had chipped away his stiff exterior, I found a man I respected and truly liked underneath.

I glanced at my hands then down the hall toward the great staircase.  He looked up over the rim of his glasses and smiled at my fidgeting, then assured me, “She'll be down in a moment.”  Then he looked toward the stairs then back to me as his brow furrowed slightly.  Then he lowered his paper and regarded me for a a long moment and said, “You know, I never did thank you.”

I cocked my head, truly curious, and inquired, “For what?”

He seemed to be looking for words, then he said slowly, “Jen's never been happier than when she's with you.  You know she's had a rough life, made rougher by dinosaurs like me that are so hidebound we don't understand anything outside of our own little box of understanding.  She was so much happier after her transition, but after she found London Harmony, and you two, umm... got together, she's always smiling.  Thank you for that, and thank you for accepting her.”

I can never quite follow the older generation, but I understood what he was saying.  His was the last generation where things like being gay, or in Jen's case, transgender, were met with open hostility.  Sure there is still some of it now, we'll never get rid of bigotry and hate altogether.  It is just human nature.  I corrected him, “We're not together sir.  I'm not really her type.  I think her happiness had more to do with the way you and your wife accepted her than me.”

He chuckled and looked toward the stairs then back at me, genuinely surprised, then asked, “She hasn't told you about her old man yet?”  He had a wicked gleam in his eyes as he spoke a little quieter as he confided in me. “I was possibly Jennifer's biggest nightmare for the longest time.  A man's man, who didn't understand my son's need to express the girl he felt he was inside.  It took an eleven-year-old to open my eyes.”

I exhaled, his eyes tinged with shame as he explained, “When our son was born, it was the proudest moment of my life.  I was proud to have a son to carry on the family name.  As he grew, he was smaller than most boys his age, and to me, something seemed off.  Millie told me it was my imagination and she loved our James with all her heart.”

He set the paper completely down now as he got into the story.  “I finally convinced Millie that something was wrong and we brought James in to see the doctor.  After a battery of tests, they determined that James had Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.  It prevented his body from metabolizing testosterone correctly.  There wasn't much they could do for it until he approached puberty, but it meant that he was smaller and looked more feminine than the other boys.”

The shame on his face deepened as he continued to share, “Of course that was a slap to my masculinity.  So as he grew, I tried to overcompensate by dressing him more masculine and the lot.  I was so bloody ignorant.  As he grew up, he wanted to play with the girls and their toys rather than with the boys.”

He seemed angry with himself as he continued. “By the time, he was five he was insisting he was a girl and not a boy.  I even spanked him when he came home one day from the park in a little dress.  One of the girls in the neighborhood had traded clothes with him.”

He half smiled. “Millie aggravated me more when I spoke about it, saying she was fine with whatever James wanted as long as he was happy.  I was of the opinion that no son of mine would be a... a... poof.  So to Millie's protestation, I started bringing James to a child psychologist.”

He shrugged and smiled sadly. “To my dismay, the doctor had informed us that James was transgender and it had absolutely nothing to do with Jame's AIS.  I didn't really understand, I don't think I wanted to understand, so I fired the doctor and went to another.  It didn't take long for him to affirm the diagnosis.  When I asked how to fix it.  They told me there was nothing to fix.  Our son identified as a girl, but was stuck in his male body, it wasn't a disease or anything.  He was just mentally female.”

He looked at his hands and rubbed a thumb on the back of his other hand like he were trying to rub some dirt off of it. “It went on for years like that, one specialist after another, telling us the same thing.  And because of his problem absorbing testosterone, by the time he was ten, he looked like any of the girls in the neighborhood, except for the buzz cut I insisted on and the boy's clothes.  He looked like a tomboy in them.  The boys in school would endlessly torment him and they beat him up regularly.  Calling him a freak and a homo.  My asinine response?  Buck up, it will make a man out of you.”

His expression softened as he glanced toward the hall and his tone changed a little more loving.  “Millie was no help at all.  She was always saying that if it made James happy, then she was happy.  She'd even get him some clothes that looked suspiciously like girls cloting to me.  Androgynous I think the term is.”

He tightened his jaw and looked up at the ceiling in memory as he said in a faraway voice, “I had come home early one night, when James was eleven, to him sitting in front of his mirror in his room, wearing one of his mother's dresses and wearing a ton of makeup, poorly applied.  And he was crying.  I was enraged and was going to put him over a knee and spank him until he gave up all the silly girl nonsense... but his tears stopped me.  He had been crying before I arrived.  So it wasn't because of my anger, or fear of punishment that he was crying.”

He inhaled a shuddering breath and seemed to offer up his hands, palms up. “I couldn't bear to see my child crying like that, and it stayed my hand.  So instead, sat beside him and I asked why exactly was he was crying.  And he told me, and it finally got through my thick skull.  It took an eleven-year-old child to make me understand.”

He looked down at his hands and exhaled.  “James told me to imagine I went to work in a dress, trying to fool everyone into thinking I was a woman.   Then he asked, 'Would you feel silly, like you are pretending, just wearing a costume?  That you didn't fit in with the other women because you really weren't one?'  I agreed, not quite knowing where he was going with it.  Then he said, 'That is how I feel every single day of my life.  Pretending to be a boy when I'm not.  I ache inside all the time knowing nobody can see past the costume I am wearing.  A costume I'm stuck inside of, even though I'm fighting to get out.'  And he cried as I just sat there stunned, I had never thought about it from his side...  no, her side.  And I felt ashamed of myself.”

He smiled weakly at me and shrugged as if in apology. “After that I spoke with Millie, and we agreed we would help James in any way we could.  After two more years of dealing with therapists and physicians, they all agreed and we started him on hormone therapy.”

He stood and walked to the wall beside the fireplace and looked at a picture.  “We let James grow her hair out as puberty was hitting like a ton of bricks.  Her AIS wound up being a blessing in disguise as she started developing into a pretty young lady.  Other trans-girls don't have that extra benefit and it takes years and dozens of painful surgeries for them to look the way they feel inside.”

He turned back toward me and exhaled before he continued, “We switched schools, hoping the harassment would end but we were getting too much press about how terrible of parents we were to let our 'poor confused son' go through transition.  On the day James turned fifteen, she went through sexual reassignment surgery to finally become the young lady she has always been.”

He motioned me over and I stood and walked over to his side as he spoke, “We had her name legally changed to the one she chose when we registered with the new school... Jennifer.”

He put a hand out, palm up, toward the picture frame he was beside.  “And then we did this, it was just fifteen years late.” There was a super cute, young Jen, she was very feminine even then, and below her was a newspaper clipping from the London Times.  I smiled at it.  It was a birth announcement that read, “There was an error in the announcement of our baby's birth fifteen years ago, it stated that our baby boy, James Theodore Harrison had been born to Millicent and Theodore Harrison.  It should have read, baby girl Jennifer Theodora Harrison.”

My left eye began to twitch as I grinned with evil mischief.  “Theodora?”  Oooo this was going to be fun.

Mr. H shook a finger at me, smiling as he chastised, “Now be nice Miss Marx.”  Then his smile waned and a sad look replaced it as he said in a hushed tone, “I love my daughter with all my heart, and I'll be trying to make up for what I put her through for the rest of my life.”

His voice cracked a bit as he said, “She's my baby girl.”

I pretended not to notice, and gave him a reassuring smile, reaching out and giving his arm a little squeeze.  I said with surety, “She knows.  She's such a daddy's girl.”

He took a deep breath and straightened up.  “Right then.  She should be down any minute.”  He turned and sat back down and started reading his paper with laser focus, pretending he hadn't just got choked up.

I tilted my head and regarded him.  He was not afraid to own up to his own shortcomings.  I had just gained even more respect for the man.  I started walking back to my seat and froze when I saw Jen in the doorway with her hand over her mouth and tears brimming.  How long had she been standing there?  She quickly walked into the room and pulled her father into a hug from behind.  She kissed his cheek and murmured, “I love you, daddy.”

He smiled, I could see the strain on his face as he fought off tears of his own as he patted her arms before she released him.  He grinned and continued to read.

She turned her gaze to me and she gave me that crooked smile of hers that I loved so much.  It was one part happiness, one part amusement, and one part... something.  It always warmed me up inside.  She said, “Right then, give us a turn.”  I grinned and spun for her.  She shrugged and said, “You'll do I guess.”

Mrs. H walked into the room with a long coat in her hands and a wicked smile on her face.  “Oh pish, she looks lovely dear, and you know it.”