Anna meets Peter.
I wheeled my bike across the plaza and leaned it up against the bench in front of the shops. As usual, it was a warm day in Palo Alto and I like to eat my lunch on the Stanford campus or the nearby pedestrian areas. I am currently teaching at an all-girls catholic school about a 5 minute ride away but I like to leave the school grounds and enjoy the bustle of the crowd. I am a people-watcher; my name is Anna Petrak
Alone on this bench, I took out the sandwich, celery, apple and milk carton from my bike basket and put them beside me. I reached into my backpack and brought out a magazine: Morbidity and Mortality monthly, and a romantic novel. I chose the novel.
Reaching for my sunglasses, I brought out another glasses case, not by mistake but I rarely used them. This pair contained pink lenses doped with chemicals to enable the near infra-red rays to be partly visible. I don't not fully understand the mechanism of action, but I reckon they are similar to night-vision glasses. They let me see some vapour hydrocarbons and are used widely in the oil patch.
I reached for the novel knowing I had just 20 minutes to eat lunch.
Then, in a moment of whimsy, I put on the IR glasses and looked down the mall. As I expected, there was nothing but yellow and grey images.
I turned and looked up the mall towards the fountain and blinked. I could hardly believe my eyes. Amongst a jostle of people there was a dark red, almost black, plume rising from the crowd.
Although it was likely a mistake or totally unrelated to what I was looking for, I knew I had to follow and identify the source.
Scrambling to gather my lunch, dump it all in my pack and grab my bike, I had to remove the IR glasses before cycling. Within 2 minutes I had reached where I thought the plume or puff of smoke had originated. Replacing the glasses, there was nothing to be seen. Just 20 or 30 people scurrying around the fountain and mothers with babies sitting on the edge, dangling their little feet in the water.
"Well, what was that?" I thought. "Probably just a trick of the light".
Yet I was not convinced of the 'mistake' and decided to return the next day, at the same time.
The next day I left the school 5 minutes earlier and stayed near the fountain at the mall a good 10 minutes later. I wore the glasses the whole time and saw ... Nothing.
The following day, the same: nothing.
Then, three days after the first sighting, I looked up from my book, with an apple in her other hand and put the pink glasses on. Two men passed by walking their bikes: the taller of the two was breathing clouds of dark red 'steam'.
I flushed and became agitated.
"What to do now?" I thought. Quickly I picked up the last of my lunch, ready to fly after the pair.
But the two men stopped at the convenience store a few paces on, the shorter man holding the bike of the taller one while he disappeared into the store, reappearing with frozen juice on sticks. They started to eat and walked on for a few minutes before mounting their bikes and cycling away, followed at a discrete distance by me.
The men cycled slowly on for a few minutes. I phoned the Mary the secretary at school to say I might be a few minutes late for my grade 12 human biology class. I briefly assigned a chapter reading. The two men then parted company, the shorter heading left towards the Medical Centre while the taller followed a path to the right, to a long, long building labeled Roswell Research. He jumped off his bike and pushed it through the front doors. I headed back to school barely a few minutes late for class.
Some more background. I am a single, healthy and attractive 29 year-old. I have a busy life though I make time for social activities. I do occasionally go to the theatre, to concerts and the usual adult activities, sometimes with a girlfriend or my cousin with whom I share an apartment. I rarely date men. Perhaps this is because I am a bit conscious of a minor inherited problem: a form of dry skin. Along with most of the females in my family my body makes a skin compound with an unusual side-chain. I know and understand this because my second degree is in medicine.
Long story short, I need a male-derived chemical to stop my skin getting dry, and other minor body problems. And the best source is male-derived body fluid. My mother and aunt have found the best source is semen, though it is present in tears, sweat, and saliva in lower quantities. One chemical involved in the production of the surface glycoprotein appears in the breath if made in large enough quantities. Hence my interest in the man with the dark breath.
Now, the question is how to get a sample of the semen for analysis? Easy you say, just get him into bed, or on the floor. Well, not so. While I am single, he may well be married. I have a stable professional life here in the Bay area and I already have a reliable source of material.
On the other hand, I have never seen such a strong potential level of production and it would be logical for me to find out if it is true, and if so, how to procure a steady supply. My mother currently supplies me from her source in a VersaPro cream base.
Perhaps a little more background is in order. I was born in Chisinau, Transdniestria, (now Moldova) a thin sliver of a country between the Ukraine and Romania. My mother Alicja, has a twin sister Marissa, both are linguists and translators and they were raised by a childless older couple. When I was five my mother moved us to Budapest to work for the UN, and my aunt went to Vienna to do similar work for the EU. There are no permanent men in our families, as yet, though I suspect the man who provides us with 'nectar' at present is in fact my father.
Mother and I arrived in California via Paris and London, for me a teaching degree in French and MB, ChB from Bart's in London. I share an apartment with my cousin Katya, Aunt Marissa's daughter, who is a high fashion model and a real knockout. She is on the 'fashion road' for 3 weeks each month so essentially I live on my own. Yes, we are high achievers. Aunt Marissa is in NY at the UN, my mother nearby in the Bay area.
So I need the know who the tall guy is. The web tells me that Roswell Research is related to big Pharma and is run by a Peter Banks. I now know the quickest way from Sacred Heart school to the ornamental fountain in the mall, where I overhear the shorter guy, he's about 5'10", call the taller guy (6'2") "Peter": good enough. They carry badminton, or maybe it is squash, racquets in their packs and play two or three times a week.
The next day I followed three girls in their mid-20's, from the research building at lunchtime and sat at a table behind them while they (and I) had lunch. Apparently Peter IS the boss, he is NOT married (yeh!) and he is looking for a date for a business dinner. Apparently they are out of consideration because one girl was invited last year and she bragged about her conquest so much that she was transferred to another section of the department. Good information, and a budding idea!
After lunch I wandered into the convenience store and bought a candy bar. I saw a notice board with file card messages fixed with thumb tacks near the door. I bought a cheap (disposable) phone at the store and wrote on a file card:
Escort available
(no, not THAT kind of escort)
•Professional woman, well presented, able dancer
•available to accompany man for evening activity
•serious contacts only please
•ask behind the desk for phone number.
