You’ll See On (N)


Magic’s day came out windy and overcast. Conrad gallantly offered Magic a chance to pick something less outdoorsy.

“Pfffft!” she replied. “I’ll wear a sweater. Lisa’ll wear a coat. It’ll be BETTER this way, fewer birds!” She packed appropriately, including layers of clothing and bulbs of water.

After a moment, she filled a backpack for Conrad, too. “You won’t need any of this, but that’ll give me twice as much water!”

“Working him like an underpaid mule?” Cher asked.

“A mule that can’t even get a sprain!” she said cheerfully.

Conrad even let her pick the remote. “That one! That one’s got the longest arms and legs. Better reach.”

“That one’s the Spider Lady model,” Conrad pointed out. “It’s a female figure.”

“Barely,” Magic said, rubbing her hands over the very slight bosom on the chest. She started to strap the pack onto it.

“Conrad?” Delli asked from his elbow. “You’re not all hung up on completely artificial gender roles, are you?”

“That’s painfully ironic, coming from you, Ghirardelli,” he said. He stressed the name, and I couldn’t figure out why for a second.

Then I realized that even after he learned about Delli’s sex change, he’d never once asked her what her original name had been.

He never referred to her by her original gender, either. He was entirely willing to let her history start the day the network had delivered her to the studio.

She smiled victoriously and he put Spider Lady and Magic’s pack into his coat pocket.

The window of the little break room looked out onto the wall they were going to climb, if at an angle. Conrad made sure we were comfortable on the sill, with food and water, then went off to lie on his office couch.

After a few minutes, we saw Lisa walking slowly out the side door. She went to the place where the rain gutter was overrun and dropped the sylphs down in the grass.

The gutter drain gave the plants a bit more stability in that area, so their weight wouldn’t rip the ivy off the bricks.

Not too much to say about the climb. Lisa held a pillowcase with two dowels in it, as a trapeze net.

We saw her move as she kept the net below Magic, and we sometimes saw the leaves shake.

“We should be on his desk,” Cher said when Magic, at least, was about four feet up.

“Watching the feed from the laptop, hearing Conrad cursing,” I nodded.

“No. No, we gotta be here,” Delli said. “If we have to shout for God to reach down and save them, we can’t have a delay.” She was right up against the glass, hands spread across the pane.

“There’s no delay!” I protested. “The signals travel at the speed of light, so at this distance-“

“It’s fine,” Cher told her, placing a hand on her hip. “We’re here, where we can help.”

“But we-“ I started to protest. He glared. I shrugged and touched Delli on her shoulder. “They’ll be fine. And if they’re not, we’re here.”

“Magic is going to be the death of me, isn’t she?” Delli said softly.

“Probably,” I said. “But think of the looks you’ll see on Conrad’s face before you go.”

She laughed at that. She didn’t look away from the ivy, but she did move her hand to grab mine. Cher nodded to me in approval.

It’s probably a good thing we didn’t listen to the sounds picked up by Conrad’s mike. I guess when they made it to the top, Magic wanted to climb back down again. Conrad said it was too far and too much of a strain on his concentration.

She shrugged and said, “Shortcut!” …and jumped. She flew down like a stooping hawk, straight into the pillowcase. Lisa knew enough to let the case fold around her, absorbing the impact.

Conrad wasn’t ABOUT to follow her. He looked over the edge and his Nope-muscle contracted, hard. But he did see the drain spout just a few inches to his left. He jumped into that and rattled down into the darkness.

Lisa caught him in her hand at the bottom. She brought them inside so Delli could scream about how scared she’d been.

She screamed enough for three people, so Cher and I didn’t have to do anything more than nod.

Conrad cuddled everyone to his chest and invited Lisa to join us at the place that makes fried ice cream…

-----

Thursday…

Thursday was bright and shiny.

Okay, maybe it was gray and overcast again, but I remember bright and shiny.

I woke up and ran over to Conrad’s bed and jumped to his pillow and shouted ‘THURSDAY!’ in his ear. He was already awake and he picked me up gently. He kissed me and tugged at my nightshirt… Then the doorbell rang and he swore.

MAN, did he swear. And I swore, too, but not as long or anywhere near as loud.

He got up and dressed and hurried downstairs.

I followed slowly.

I heard him open the door and then Lisa was apologizing.

“I’m sorry to barge over here, but there’s a maid of honor emergency in Pocatello, and I’ll still take care of your sylphs, but we have to get on the road right now, and-“

“They’re already packing,” Conrad said. “I’m starting coffee.” I continued to the first floor as I heard feet going into the kitchen.

I had just made it from the landing to the front hall when I heard “Look out!”

I turned as Cher dropped a duffel bag from the catwalk over the Love Nest. Then a second one followed. He disappeared, probably to take the ladder down to the floor.

In the corner across from the television, Conrad had installed a sort of cat tower. The pole stretched from floor to ceiling, with little boxes and shelves for a cat to lounge on or explore or hide in.

The top shelf was the perfect size for Magic’s aquarium bedroom.

I walked across the carpet towards the tower.

She wasn’t quite as… I don’t want to say ‘anal’ about her clothes… She wasn’t as, um, orderly? Regimented? Compulsive? As tidy as, for example, Delli was.

So it took her a bit longer to gather a few days of clothing, but once she did, it took almost the same amount of time to get to the floor.

She didn’t toss her duffel. She likes traveling with a burden. So it was a quick series of jumps and drops and heart-in-my-throat leaps over the abyss.

Then she was running across the carpet to me. “OOOOH! You get an early start AND extra time!”

“I know!” I sounded giddy. Well, fair enough, I was feeling pretty giddy.

We heard the toaster snap up in the kitchen. “Waffles!” we said together.

We turned to run for our breakfast before they hit the road. Cher and Delli were already there, taking their square of waffle and drenching it with butter and jam.

Lisa sipped from her mug and watched with a small smile.

She was clearly only minutes away from being on the road, and no one was yelling at her about it being ‘simply impossible.’

Conrad made sure everyone had packed enough clothes, even Delli. “Especially Delli,” he said.

“I have a very clear understanding of my clothing needs for the foreseeable!” she told him.

He didn’t ask about toothbrushes or shampoo, we just maintain a travel pack of that stuff in the Set, it was already on the table in the front hall.

Then, my God, it was like babysitting.

Conrad was a sitter in high school. When I sylphed I became one. We had a really good reputation, so a lot of parents recommended us to parents who didn’t know any sitters.

People on their third kid, or who’d used sitters, they were halfway out the door when we arrived. “Phone numbers are (location), food is in the fridge, back at (time estimate).”

New parents, they had to make sure the kids were prepared to behave when they were left alone with the strangers. And that the sitter knew the limits the kids were allowed to go to.

Conrad made sure every one of his pets knew that Lisa was in charge, including dress codes. He made sure Lisa was familiar with how many times a day sylphs needed to eat. He got three vows of polite behavior. I think he started to make sure Lisa knew his phone number, but even he realized that was a redundant step for our secretary.

He gave Lisa an entire case of sylph snacks and they were off.

And he turned to me. One hand hovered beside me, a fingertip stroking me from hip to shoulder.

“Looks like we have more time than we expected.”

I grabbed a knuckle and kissed it. “A little, yeah.”

“And more freedom.” He cupped his hand behind me and scooped me up. “I… I don’t want to play with Legos.”

“Aw,” I said in a robotic delivery. “That is a disappointing development.”

“Well, yeah, but you know, I really wanna take you on a date.”

“OOooh, Conrad!” I gushed. “Where to?”

“The Art Museum has an exhibit on sylph art,” he mused.

“I’m the one who told you that!” I said.

“So, does that mean you’re interested?”

“I have to get dressed….”

He looked at his wrist, forgetting that his watch was still upstairs. By his shoes and clean shirts and socks… Then he found the time on the microwave. “I think you have time to change, they don’t open for four hours.”

Then he pinched my nightshirt again. “Of course, to get dressed means this has to come off… Right?”

“Right,” I said slowly, lifting my arms over my head.

-----

The Boise Art Museum was not terribly crowded. We got there right at the opening.

Since there was a sylph exhibit, they had a discount for tickets if you brought one. But rather than the usual ‘sylph owners get in half off’ sign, this one said ‘Sylphs and their Plus One’ got the discount.

Many of the exhibits were interactive, and some had the actual artists present.

As we looked over the map and the times of certain performances, I tugged on Conrad’s pocket. “We could do a SHOW here! I mean, right here! I could take a camera through the sylph tunnel, or-“

A giant fingertip came to rest on my lips (and nose and chin and cheeks, but I got the idea).

“Shhhhh. Today’s about us. THIS part of the date is about you. What do you want to see or do?” he asked.

I started to protest that doing the show WAS what I wanted to do.

“They’ll be here for three months,” he went on, before I could speak. “We can look into this after the convention, after the whole ‘remotes’ thing. Okay?”

“Okay,” I allowed.

“What do you want to see?”

“Body paints,” I said. He checked the map and off we went.

It wasn’t quite what you’re thinking. Someone had adapted an airbrush for sylphs to use. It looked like a firefighter’s gear. Using it well required the entire sylph’s body to be involved, thus the name. It wasn’t just a matter of ‘it’s all in the wrist.’

We watched a guy, Vermillion, doing a mural for a while. I introduced myself when he took a break and he let me try the thing.

“I don’t want to ruin your painting!”

“Do it at this end. I’m going to paint over it later. No harm, no foul!” He smiled and started lifting the straps for me.

Conrad pushed the small of my back, shoving me forward. Oh, well, if I was going to be outvoted, I might as well…

I tried for a simple drawing of a donut. When I was done, I stepped back and considered it.

“Well, I’m not going to do this in front of a camera,” I decided.

“It just takes practice,” Vermillion told me.

The maze was fun. I figured out that they’d used Conrad’s trick, where inner and outer walls didn’t touch, and looked or clues to find the inner walls.

I became the first sylph in Boise to solve it! I gave all credit to my master’s training. The guy running the maze was a fan of the show, though, and wouldn’t believe Conrad capable of something like that. Conrad shrugged and we went on.

The sylph cooking exhibit was a whimsical approach to sylphs in the kitchen. An egg beater that you drove. A bread knife that you pedaled. A butter dish that squirted butter through a sort of cannon. A suit of armor, with sword and shield, for pitting cherries while observing the chivalric code.

After wandering through the museum, talking to artists (and getting phone numbers), Conrad took me out to eat.

Then back to the house.

He checked the time. “Guests for the convention start arriving at-“

“And the ACTUAL organizers have the ACTUAL responsibility of getting them to hotels,” I pointed out. “WE don’t have to be anywhere until tomorrow.”

“You sound confident,” he said.

“I turned off your phone,” I admitted. He pulled it out and looked at it. Smiled, placed it on the table.

Then he had a thought and picked up the landline. There was no dial tone. “Sneaky,” he said.

“Thanks. Now, what, oh, what, can we do with the afternoon?”

“Lego’s?”

“Hold me up to your face so I can spit in your eye, Conrad.”

“Sweet talker,” he murmured. He did pick me up, but turned me around. With me held right in front of his mouth, he set his voice to gravelly and said, “Electra.”

I writhed in his fist. Chills ran up and down my spine. Mostly it was the vibrations coming through his skeleton, but the voice itself didn’t hurt.

Then he carried me up the stairs.

He put me down on the headboard. There was a remote there. It was The Nerd. A skinny male figure, with bumps to give the impression of glasses.

I stood next to it, smiled up at Conrad, and started to undress.

“No!” he said.

“What? I thought we were…”

“Well, YEAH! But… I wanted to do that.”

I lowered my hands. “Okay.”

He picked up the helmet and lay down. Then he got up again, turning on his radio, to a music station. Music from the distant 80’s. Then lay back down. There was a click and the Nerd started to move…

Conrad’s face peered out of the screen, looking at me with frank interest.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.” He stepped up and took my hands in his clamps. They were gentle, much more gentle than you’d expect for such mechanical looking things.

“Nice touch,” I said.

“Lots of practice,” I said. “I’m, um, I’m really glad you went last.”

“I suspect the others cheated, and I think they did it for exactly this reason.” I kissed him. It… It wasn’t a good kiss. I just pressed flat on the screen. “Oh. Okay, can’t do that.”

“Sure you can,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to see you coming at me, going in for the kiss, since fifth grade.”

“I thought you were in love with Sheila Jones in the fifth grade!” I pointed out.

“I asked her to marry me,” he said, “but only because she had a Voyage to the Bottom of The Sea lunch box. I thought we were sympatico.”

“It was a hand-me-down from her brother,” I knew. “She hated it, but the option was paper sacks and she hated those more.”

“Yeah, it wouldn’t have worked out. And when I kissed her, I would have been thinking of you.”

“That’s either very sweet,” I said, “or the creepiest thing you’ve said to me in a long, long time.”

“Well, I don’t want to creep you out.” He took me into a hug. We stayed there for a long moment, rocking slightly to the music.

“So, you wanted to undress me?” I asked.

“Please?” he asked.

“Please,” I replied.

He maintained eye contact as he lifted the hem of my shirt. I cooperated as he slid it up and off of me. He looked over the revealed skin for a while.

“It’s the same belly you soaped this morning in the shower,” I said.

“But there’s so much more of it!” he whispered.

“What?!”

“I mean,” he said quickly, “that down here, I see it more closely. It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful. And you’re even more beautiful, the more of you there- The more of you I can see.”

“Uh huh…”

He turned me around slowly, pausing to hug when I faced away from him. The touch of the remote was cold, but the pressure of his grip was pleasant.

From behind me he opened my pants and slowly inched them down my legs. I turned when I stepped out of them and faced him.

He stayed down on his knees, looking up at me. “Wow,” I said. “This never happens.”

“I always look up to you,” he said. The mind-reading wasn’t even remarkable at this point.

He squeezed my thighs, then stood, moving his hands up along my sides, careful not to tickle.

He reached around to my back. “I don’t have a lot of experience unhooking bras,” he said.

“It’s a bandeau!” I said. “It’s elastic! About as complicated as taking off your underwear!”

“I know,” he said in that infuriating tone. “I still don’t have a lot of experience with bras.”

“Undress me, you asshole,” I said, though I knew that just validated his joke.

He smiled and slid thumbs under the elastic, tugging gently down. When my boobs were bared, he knelt to examine them closely.

I hissed as fingers squeezed and twisted, lifted and tugged. He rose and stepped around me, cupping me from the back, arms around mine.

I leaned back a bit, supported in his hold, comfortable against him.

“Have to tell Ray,” I murmured. “Warmer remotes.”

“Near as I can tell,” Conrad said, “you’re hot enough as it is.” He pushed the bandeau down further, taking the panties with it when he reached those.

When I was naked, he walked around me, looking me over. I posed, just a bit. Hands on hips, legs slightly spread.

“Like the view?” I asked.

“I’m quite willing to worship the view,” he said as he went around behind me again.

Suddenly he grabbed me up into his arms and jumped off the headboard.

We landed in the middle of his pillow. His spare pillow, not the one with the helmet in it.

He laid me gently down on the downy softness, arranging me. Then he knelt there, staring at me, a sort of wonder in his face.

“What are you thinking?” I asked.

“I’m thinking of that line. From that movie,” he said kind of breathlessly. “The one that kind of applies to this situation.”

I quoted the angel, from City of Angels: “I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss from her mouth, one touch of her hand than eternity without it?”

“Missed that one,” he said. “Heavy Metal.” He held up his clamp and twisted it. “Earth women who experience sexual ecstasy with mechanical assistance always tend to feel guilty.”

“Let’s give it a try,” I said dryly. “I promise not to be suicidal if you’re successful.”

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted from a lover! No suicides!”

A hand to each thigh, he started rubbing fingertips up and down the length of my pussy. I spread my legs further. I purred.

He WAS well practiced with the remote!

He scooted up to my side, kneeling at one hip, able to reach my breasts and pussy at the same time.

I marveled at his touch. We’d been intimate so many times, but always, it was the giant finger touching me like a sun-warmed beach ball. The giant tongue caressing me, a sleeping bag made of jello. A mouth like a wind tunnel sucking at me.

Nothing wrong with any of that, if that’s what you’re used to, but now he was… It felt more focused. Like he was finding one nerve ending at a time and playing with it.

“A little to the right,” I moaned.

He obeyed, then said, “You’ve never said that before.”

“I’ve never had to, before,” I replied. Plus, it never would have mattered a damn. A little to his right and he’d have missed me completely.

A few steps away, his actual breathing from his actual face sped up, got louder. As always, the simple fact that I, little me, could cause that much excitement in someone that huge, it gave me quite a thrill. A sense of power that had been taken from me one morning in high school.

I also lost control of the sounds I was making, broadcasting my pleasure without fear of being overheard. It was the most alone we’d been in 17 years, and I felt a release of some restraint I hadn’t noticed before.

He had two fingers inside me (a novel experience for both of us), the others touching and squeezing alongside. I grabbed his wrist and pulled him in. “Deeper!” I cried.

He pushed, pinching one nipple. I came, shrieking, slamming the pillow with my heels.

Conrad did not move to cuddle afterwards, but threw himself away from me. “Conrad?” An instant later his hand found me, lifting me to his throat, cuddling me against his pulse. His warm, living pulse. Against his actual soft skin. Muuuuuuuuuuch better.

I cleaved unto him and let the world disappear in a kind of brown doze.

He wrestled the helmet off one-handed and lay there, feeling my heartbeat against his own. In moments they had synchronized. His beats came at every third one of mine.

We floated in that mutual haze for a bit. “Now,” I finally said, sitting up on his throat and stretching. “What can I do for you?”

That’s when they knocked on our door.

I swore. Conrad rolled out of the bed and stood, lowering me to the pillow, dropping me in the middle of the warm spot where his head had been.

A second later, he swept my clothes off the headboard and dropped them beside me.

“I swear,” he said, “if the first thing out of anyone’s mouth is ‘We would have called,’ someone’s gonna get punched in the throat.”

“Better hope it’s not Glenda, then, she can take you.”

“Electra, everyone can take me,” he sighed. “I’m still going down swinging.”

He ran down the stairs. I lay there, looking at my clothes, trying to remember the order in which they went back on.

I heard the door open.

I heard Ray’s voice, “Hey! Got in early! We tried to call but-“

And then Conrad slammed the door in his face.



-----
Index

152. Staying On

154. Insignia On