Lavender Blue Panties

Julia Harvey's Monday had proceeded very well until 3 p.m. All who knew Doctor Harvey would affirm that her resolute utilitarian cheerfulness could never be untracked by any mundane existential occurrence. Exuberant professionalism marked her personality and a gilded steel will power enabled her gifted intellect.

Julia's husband, Steve, called Harve by close friends with a long shared history, had almost sparked her ire that morning as she poured her first cup of coffee. He had attempted begin the day with a timid complaint that she was never home for dinner.

But she managed to protect her bright forecast for the day with a quick, masterful exercise in subtle control. With only a narrowing of the eyes and pursing of the lips, Julia could serve him with fair warning. She was considerate of his welfare by always prepared to prevent him from offending her with inappropriate questions about her personal life.

"The girls and I haven't seen you at night for six weeks," he had said that morning, obviously preparing to discuss her all consuming professional life. Her endless weeks of marathon 12-hour days were negatively compounded by four to six-hour nightly board meetings for one of her volunteer community committees.

Steve had reacted that morning with the requisite respect and silenced his protest when she brought him to heel. Dr. Julia Harvey almost laughed contemptuously as her husband seemed to study her practiced disciplinary smirk.

So pleased was she with the result of her patented painless "hubby whip" that she gratuitously brushed his lips with hers as she strode from the kitchen, slid under the wheel of her Mercedes and accelerated away with determination and purpose.

No eventuality short of a family health catastrophe would ever have the audacity to challenge Dr.Julia Harvey's perception of self worth and earned station.

But they would have been wrong late Monday after the clocks recorded 3 p.m. Her spirit became dark as she terminated the first phone call at 3:05 p.m.and began to slide into an abyss of unmitigable terror as she ended the second at 3:08 p.m.

As she had prepared to walk from her office in the psych building to the lecture theater in the administration building, her office phone had chirped twice at 3:03. She had paused with purse under her arm to answer, though annoyed that she would be late for the initial faculty meeting with the new university president.

Her first caller was Jenkins, her long time colleague and friend, a veteran prof over at history.

"Jenks, could I call you later," she began,"I am late for a meeting of the chairs with the new president."

"I won't keep you long," Jenkins answered tersely. "I have one question for you, Jules,'Why does Harve want to by a Glock all of a sudden?"

Your husband's devoting 20 years to scathing denouncements of guns and gun sellers then asking me to sell him a gun raises all kinds of speculations, Jenkins reminded Julia.

"What the hell is a Glock," Julia guffawed spontaneously.

"My dear, a Glock is a small piece of metal that fits into one's hand and spits very lethal little pellets called bullets,"Jenkins said,unrelentingly serious.

First reactions are telling, and Jenks tensed when Julia characteristically responded with a dismissive laugh.

Julia snorted, "What nonsense! My little Harve would never find the nerve to buy a gun."

"Jules? I can say what I am about to say because I have loved you and Harve for 25 years," Jenkins said, his voice weighted with apprehension and sadness. "Jules, listen to me! I know! And I urge you to get your head out of your ass before it's too late. Your gaming Harve might already be beyond reason."

Julia permitted silence to prevail. After a significant time during which she did not respond to Jenkins' warning, she looked at her watch and said she was late for her meeting with the new president. Jenkins broke the connection abruptly.

As Julia slowly replaced the receiver, the phone chirped again at 3:06. She was annoyed, thinking Jenkins was persisting with his intervention in her affair. She answered and began with a blistering reproach intended for Jenkins until the voice at the other end of the line hammered her sensibilities with an unexpected demand.

"Dr. Harvey! Shut up and listen to me!" It was the officiously impertinent young woman, the powerful personal assistant with the whisky voice who served as liaison between her and a variegated congregate of business associates.

Without a doubt, the pugnacious academic had caught the money bug. Julia had never known persons like these, unsmiling men and women who, for understandable reasons, always remained unheralded while in the midst of tedious multi faceted financial projects. They breathed, tasted and talked money. Becoming enamored with the surrealistic beauty of money was a new and challenging prospect for Dr. Julia Harvey.

"Representatives of my managing principals will meet you and Alexander at 7 p.m. tonight at the Miles farm," the voice directed. "Do you understand?"

"What's this about?" Julia rasped, fear balling uncomfortably in her belly. With more than $300 million in federal development funds driving the negotiations, Julia knew that "whisky voice" would not have called her at her office had the situation not become threatening in some manner.

Indicating that the topic was not open for discussion, the woman ended the call with flat voiced directive for Julia and Jeffery Alexander to "be there on time."

Julia stared at the phone as if it had become a formidable adversary. Then she pulled her cell phone from her purse and pressed the single key that would connect her to Jeffery Alexander.

"What is it, Julia?" Jeffery Alexander whispered as he answered. "I can't talk now."

"Jeff, we've been ordered to attend a meeting with the 'managing principals' tonight a seven," she said hurriedly, her voice tight with the unaccustomed tension.

"Damn! Not tonight!" Jeffery wheezed. "All hell has broken loose over here."

Jeffery quickly warned Julia that his wife and her attorney were invading his offices as he spoke threatening him with personal and financial ruin.

"Lisa knows! She knows about us," Jeffery whispered. "They're coming back after a break in the torture. I've got to go."

He broke the connection after directing her to meet him on the Walmart parking lot a 6:30. They would drive to the Miles farm together in his SUV. Her Mercedes would be too pretentious and draw attention of anyone who saw them on the country roads.

Intrigue had brought with it a strange spirit charged fugue that Julia had never experienced. Though the reward for enduring the risks and strains this fugue could be the equivalent of the veritable "King's Ransom," Julia was beginning to perceive danger and sense chaos, realizations heretofore in the realm of fantasy.

At times, usually just after the witching hour, she would awaken sticky from a coating of sweat, filled with flashes of fear that defied her great intellectual control. As the sun appeared over the mountains, however, she always was able to restore her fantasy vision of the different life she would buy with her share of $300 million.

As she trotted across the quadrangle toward the administration building, she glanced up at the heavy black clouds suddenly drooping with rain.

And it seemed apropos that with each of the phone conversations her day had begun to darken emotionally, summarily summoning an unfamiliar foreboding.

Juggling the import of the two phone calls evoked an ill defined set of strange contradictory and contending delusions. Against the back drop of the potentially damaging meeting with the new university president, this was an unwelcome and troubling channel of existence for Julia.

Being late for any event was anathema to Julia. Punctuality equated with "good faith" in Julia's Catholic conditioned mentality; and most certainly, for a post modern woman determined to gear herself fundamentally to 21st Century mores and taboos, this unwanted contrarian stream of archaic governance had recently begun to trigger a perceived humiliation at the most inconvenient moments.

Dr. Julia Harvey was indeed a child of destiny. She had been caught in a cultural whiplash between the ruling theological core values that prevailed before the 1960 presidential election and the competing monolithic forces that won that pivotal victory.

President Bernice Hampton Sharif's introductory address to her faculty had progressed to the 20-minute mark when Julia paused in the hallway outside the door of the mini theater that also serves as a lecture hall. As she peered through the glass slit in the door, she realized that her jeopardy with the new status leader could not be any more threatening; therefore, she wheeled resolutely on her three-inch heel and strode toward the parking lot.

Suddenly, the import of the telephone conversation with Jenks blossomed into a scalding fear. Was Jenks serious? Had her nondescript husband inquired about buying a gun? This was too preposterous in Julia's estimation to deserve conscious thought.

But Jeffery had told her within the past hour that his wife, Lisa, knew "everything." And Jeffery, the exemplary man for all seasons, was, as her father loved to say, "Butt naked scared."

As Julia started her Mercedes and drove toward home, she was enveloped by a cold foreboding. Her hands suddenly were wet and slippery on the steering wheel. Sweat lathered her body. Such sudden changes in body functioning were foreign to her autonomic nervous system.

Rain washed the pavement as her head lamps caught the crystallizing ornamental effect of the cascading water. And the wipers functioned as a mind numbing choral metronome, mocking her resistance to the implied weakness of the growing need for simplistic reassurance.The contemptuous blades seemed to be singing, "Pride goeth before the fall...A world awash with the waste of fools..."

Once again the force accrued from a life time religiously dedicated to building her self esteem and immeasurable self confidence arose from her subconscious depths and rescued her. With the revival of her carefully nurtured confidence came the nerve to rationalize her threatening situation.

Some how the darkly comedic aspects of "survival of the fittest" complemented the ludicrous posturing of "social selflessness." Without a doubt, Dr. Julia Harvey had rationalized the "social justice" in her receiving $5 million for her assistance as a member of the three-person hospital board.

After all, she was volunteering her expertise and intellectual superiority as a community service. These powerful financial exemplars required her cooperation in bringing a state of the art medical center and research institute to fruition. And compensating her for her extraordinary assistance in smoothing the process in that achievement was only fair and just.

As she turned into her residential street, she saw Harve's pickup in the drive parked in front of his garage stall. Her dash clock read 5:25 p.m. As if cued by a magisterial director, Julia's Gluteus maximus, medius and minimus muscles worked in concert to clinch her butt with resounding force. Suddenly she felt renewed and in command.

As the tingling notes of reassurance radiated from her fundament, she was assured that all was well and she would always prevail; for had she not devoted all of her educative resources and energies to making herself infallible. Sadly, this was the twisted reality of Dr. Julia Harvey's 22 years as a behavioral specialist, the last 12 years celebrated as an admired researcher and author as well as professor.

Sounds of the TV news at 5:30 welcomed her from the livingroom. She tightened and attempted to focus the combined totality of her cognitive, nervous and sensory systems, offense more than defense. She advanced boldly toward her husband's recliner.

"What the hell is this foolishness about your buying a gun?" Julia demanded as she strode into the room and dropped her purse on the coffee table.

Harve continued to relax in his recliner smiling and concentrating on the TV. Julia assumed a commanding stance, hands on her hips.

"Don't ignore me!" she scolded. "What in the hell would you do with a gun?"

Harve lifted his beer bottle to his lips, guzzled for three seconds, and turned to appraise his wife's threatening posture.

"I'm taking you out to dinner tonight," he announced, a hint of a taunting smile playing at the corners of his mouth.

"Don't try to fancy ass out of answering my question!" she shot back. "Let's get this shit cleared up about a gun."

"And, my dear, I expect you to wear your new lavender blue high cut panties for my viewing pleasure!" His eyes narrowed but he smiled thinly.

End Ch. 2 of Lavender Blue Panties.

TO BE CONTINUED