Valentine's Dinner?

47. Of Cirques and Fannies

When Valerie returned from the loo, Lorne and Chloe were sitting on a couch in the lounge looking at a computer, so she paused on the carpet a few steps behind them to watch and listen, breathing silent sighs.

Chloe ran the cursor across the Google Earth display. "This pin is where I figured you were." She giggled. "See, I even named it Daddy."

"That's very close." Lorne pointed to the screen. "We were here. Lisa had spotted a flat, open place at the mouth of this cirque."

"What's a serk? Patrick said it yesterday a couple of times."

"It's adopted from the French word for circus. It's like an amphitheatre hollowed out of the side of a mountain, almost as if someone had taken a chunk out of it with an ice-cream scoop. Another name used is hanging valley – the Scots call it a coire and the Welsh say cwm."

"You know a lot of stuff, don't you?"

"About things which interest me. In this case, it's about mountains."

"Will you take us climbing?"

"If your mother wishes."

"Yes, she wishes." Valerie stepped forward and laid her hands on Lorne's shoulders gently squeezing as she bent to kiss his cheek. "Has she shown you the cell phone coverage map?"

"Yes, all presented in fine scholarly order. Her logic is impressive, as is her initiative."

"The past several weeks, she has really blossomed. I think school had been holding her back."

Chloe nodded. "It was. It was stifling. The teachers were always telling me to stick to the lesson. If I already know it, why should I stop there?"

"Some teachers don't understand what education is." Lorne turned to look up at Valerie as he placed a hand on hers and pressed. "She needs a good private tutor."

"I hired one when I took her out of school. Dr Moore's approach is to encourage students to extend themselves not only upwards, but also sideways, and it certainly shows."

"I didn't know she's a doctor. I've always called her Miss Moore."

"That's what she prefers, Sweetheart." Valerie chuckled. "She told me she was tired of everyone asking for medical advice. Her doctorate is in education." She glanced at her watch. "I need to tell her we're delayed. She was coming this afternoon. Need to tell Grace as well."

A few minutes later, the three sat side-by-side on the couch, leaning over their computers on the coffee table. Valerie scanned her unread emails. Oh, no! She opened the one from Security, and she breathed more easily as she read. "My team still can't find you, Lorne."

"I'm pleased. We'll have to try to keep it that way." Lorne concentrated on his screen for a short while, then he looked up and shrugged. "I'll have to stay away from the office. Says in this email there's the media equivalent of a SWAT team staked out."

"Why can't they concentrate on something more serious? Catherine writes here that the lobby is filled with creeps, as she calls them."

"Serious doesn't sell. Makes sense we stay out of sight, and the longer we do, the colder the story. They can't make money if they have nothing fresh to report. They'll eventually look for other targets. Easier ones."

"Yeah. Might be best if I have my meeting moved. Prevent having to force my way through the scrum." She bobbed her head slowly as she thought. "I'll have Lydia greet them, and then have Lester drive them all to the Shangri-La, the Four Seasons or whichever has a meeting room available. There are half a dozen major hotels within a few blocks of the office."

Lorne tilted his head as he looked into Valerie's eyes. "Just thinking; how would the women know they were their bodies in the Photoshopped images?"

Valerie smiled to herself. Surely he's looked at enough porn to know. "Each fanny is different, Lorne. Different shapes, configurations, colours and sizes. This was one of the keys to convicting Broughton in the second trial. We used certified pictures of me to compare to his manipulated ones." Oh, fuck! Why did I go there? "In this instance, though, the first woman recognised her tattoos, and then the poses and the setting."

They all turned back to their computers, and after several minutes, Chloe said, "Mummy, look at this. It shows the variety you mentioned."

Valerie paused her typing and looked at Chloe's screen. Oh, God! I'm sure I have the parental controls set. "How did you manage to get to that porn site?"

"It's not porn, Mummy. It's educational. It's on Wikipedia – in their Wikimedia site. I linked to it from their vulva page. Look at it, though, thirty-six fannies and each so different from the other."

Valerie bobbed her head. "Yeah."

Lorne put his hand to his mouth to stifle a laugh, then he looked more closely at the screen. "This is a fine illustration of not only the diversity, but it shows examples of the continuum. Are you familiar with sexual differentiation, the evolution from the embryo?

"Like how boy parts and girl parts start out the same?"

"Exactly. And once the differentiation occurs, the parts change more than any others in our bodies. And because of this, they are found in far greater variety than any other part."

Chloe nodded. "Yeah, that makes sense. And some people get stuck in the middle, don't they? Not clearly one or the other."

"Yes, they do. And some people identify with a gender which differs from their parts."

"Like some of the letters in BLT and so on."

Lorne chuckled. "Yes, but that combination of letters usually refers to a bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich, Sweetheart. I think you mean GBLT."

Chloe giggled. "Yeah, not the sandwich." She clicked at her keyboard. "I wonder if there is also an image showing all the different shapes and sizes of penises."

"Hmmm." Valerie grimaced. "We can look at that together later, Sweetheart." Much later. "Why don't you look up Franschhoek so you can tell us all about it before we get there?"