Passages
As the time for the conference approached, Jasmin became more, and more, nervous. Her negotiations with the people at Haines had gone well, and she'd even persuaded her main contact there to send a couple of their company representatives to the conference that afternoon, but, even so, her success over the phone, which, thankfully, didn't stick to her hand again, did nothing to quell the growing population of butterflies in her stomach. She ate hardly any lunch, and, by the time of the meeting, she was close to being a dysfunctional wreck.
Joan, having successfully found a source, just barely made it back in time with her shoes. They had three inch heels, looked yuchy and pinched her toes something awful, but they were all that could be found that were even close to her size, so they had to do.
It already being past the time that she should've been at the conference room, Jasmin grabbed her notes, and glasses, and headed for her office door, then suddenly realized that she badly needed some oil on her stinging inner thighs.
Doubling back, she deposited her stuff on her desk, and found the oil. After squirting too much into her palm, she was about to apply it when she noticed Joan standing right there watching her with a curious expression on her craggy features. She hesitated a moment, then thought, Screw it, and hiked her skirt up past her hips. As she hastily rubbed the soothing oil between her legs, she noted the befuddled look on her secretary's face.
"Don't - ask!" she stated more as a plea.
Done, she ditched the tube, grabbed her glasses, and bolted for the door.
Joan spied the notes still on her desk, and grabbed them.
"Miss Jing!" she barked.
Jasmin stopped, and quickly turned about.
"What?"
"Your notes," Joan said, hurrying to her with her note-bearing hand out-stretched.
"Thanks," said Jasmin quietly as she took the pages into the hand she'd just oiled herself with.
She turned to leave, but, as she was unfamiliar with the additional height her new shoes imposed on her, she whacked her forehead sharply against the top of the door frame. Being more startled than injured, Jasmin dropped her notes, except for the top page, which had become stuck to her oily thumb, and the bottom page, which had become stuck to her oily fingers.
She stooped to gather the fallen sheets, assisted by Joan, who'd rushed forward to help. When all were collected, she stood erect, but, in doing so, she snagged her skirt on the door, and was then surprised when the door started moving in tandem with her hip.
"Wha . . . ?"
"Don't move!" Joan commanded sharply. "You're caught somewhere."
"Oh, no . . . ," Jasmin whined, trying to see just where she was caught.
Joan made a quick examination.
"Here, it's in the back," she reported. "Stoop down a bit."
Jasmin complied as Joan worked to free her. She took the new delay as an opportunity to get her notes back in order, but, as she mounted her glasses on her face, she'd forgotten about her enlargened head so that, when she made to place them with her right hand she accidentally inserted the ear piece of the opposing temple directly into her left eye.
That hurt, for some reason, even with her denser tissue structure. After a painful fit of forceful blinking, she was now squint-eyed on the left side.
Not to worry, she thought, because she still had her right eye.
When she got her spectacles suitably arranged on the end of her nose, however, she discovered that the lens she'd anticipated using had become badly smudged from the oil residue on her fingers. Now she was essentially blind in one eye, and couldn't see out of the other.
Staring at the topmost page of her notes, Jasmin moved her head around until she found an upper corner of the lens that was still clear. She then began to collate her pages in spite of the fact that the oil on her hands hampered the effort.
Jasmin was in the midst of this when she began to sense another presence. Glancing up, she saw someone standing before her through a visual fog of reading lens, and smeared body oil. At her extreme height, she had to tuck in her chin uncomfortably in order to peer over her glasses to see that it was Hal, a draftsman with the firm, standing in the isle just outside her doorway, watching her.
This brought out a curiosity about Jasmin in that she felt obliged to maintain what she considered to be the proper demeanor for an executive under all conditions. In keeping with this quirk, and suddenly finding herself in the company of subordinate, she eased her formidable frame into her formal bearing, in spite of the disarray of her notes, and her only partially recovered left eye, by straightening her knees to stand up straight.
"Stoop!" Joan barked from behind her.
Complying with her secretary's order, Jasmin then tried to be the very proper young executive that she was, with her knees bent.
Hal, in the meantime, had been curiously studying his unusual looking superior's unusual looking behavior.
"Is there a . . . problem, Miss Jing?" he innocently ventured to ask at length.
Jasmin tried to force her squint-eye all the way open.
"No I'm . . . ," she said quickly before slowing her pace to say, " . . . fine."
That fib brought Joan out from behind her. She looked up at her, slightly amazed, then looked at Hal.
"No, she's not," she announced. "Hal, could you give me a hand here?"
Hal obligingly moved through her doorway toward Joan.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
"She's caught on the door," Joan told him.
"Oooo," Hal intoned, taking in the situation.
"Oh, please," Jasmin urged as she fidgeted, somehow forgetting her executive demeanor, "don't tear it."
"No, it's okay, Miss Jing," Hal assured her as he assessed the problem. "Just hold still, and we'll get you out o' here."
As Hal worked on her skirt, Joan produced a tissue, and presented herself before the young executive.
"Gimme that hand," she instructed her.
Holding her notes in the other, Jasmin surrendered her oily hand, and Joan wiped it clean with the tissue. Hearing her boss sigh, the older secretary glanced up at her, and didn't like what she saw.
"You're gonna be okay," she told her caringly. "Alright?"
Appreciating her words, Jasmin smiled, and nodded.
"Yeah," she replied in a little voice.
"Okay, Miss Jing," Hal declared, "you're a free woman."
Jasmin immediately swung her hip away from the door.
"Oh, great!" she enthused. "Thank you."
"'t's okay," Hal said dismissively, "no problem."
She moved to leave.
"Doorway!" Joan barked.
Jasmin ducked her head clear of it.
Safely outside, she started down the isle toward the conference room.
"Glasses!" Joan barked at her again, having followed her into the isle.
With ballet training, Jasmin was able to turn, pull her glasses from her face to show Joan that she had them, smile, then turn again and hurry on her way with her notes clutched in both hands across her bosom, all without the slightest pause in her stride. Hal joined the secretary as they watched after her from just outside her office doorway.
"Haah," Joan sighed before saying quietly, "I worry about that girl."
Hal looked at the secretary, then smiled, and laughed quietly to himself. Returning his gaze to the huge, young executive receding in the distance.
"Don't worry, Joan," he assured her. "Soon as she gets in that conference room, she'll be just fine."
"Oh, I know that," Joan rasped matter of factly with a glance in Hal's direction, but then she became concerned again as she looked after her charge. "It's just getting her there that worries me."
The last attendee had filed into the conference room when Jasmin arrived. Standing outside the double doorway, Carlson looked her over briefly, then looked up at her. Jasmin returned his gaze, and they stood there studying each other for a few moments. The executive was tired, and still over-stressed, from, what had been for him, an unusually busy Monday morning. He'd wanted to have a serious discussion with his young subordinate about her appearance, but had never been able to find the time with the seemingly unending string of minor disasters that had suddenly come to light. Now it was too late for any kind of discussion. It was also too late to find a suitable replacement for her who was up to speed on the project proposal.
Jasmin could tell that her employer was not pleased with the way she looked. Her transformed size, and height, aside, she knew that she was under dressed for the occasion with her huge, muscle-swollen arms, and pumpkin-like shoulders exposed. She sensed that it wouldn't've mattered if she'd told him that it was a situation far beyond her ability to control. Carlson had a lot riding on Jasmin with this project and, with her physical metamorphosis, he couldn't help but feel that she'd let him down. Looking down at him, Jasmin noticed his jaw repeatedly tighten, then relax. At length Carlson spoke, but he merely said to her, "You're late." His eyes then drifted away from her, and he went into the room, leaving Jasmin to enter by herself.
Jasmin quietly closed the doors to the conference room after herself. Since everyone sat facing toward the front of the room, she kept herself at the rear wall where the doors were, hoping to remain out of view for as long as possible. Not wanting to risk her weight on a chair, she sat on her hams with her back against the wall, and finished collating her notes on her knees. When that chore was done, her mind returned to how Carlson had reacted to her outside the room. It hadn't helped to ease her considerable fears about how the group would react to her appearance. Though deeply bowed in spirit, Jasmin forced herself to keep her chin up, and kept a watchful eye on the group in case anyone should notice her.
There were just under forty people in attendance; bankers, contractors, city officials and their accompanying support staff. The group was sizable enough that the large conference table, which normally dominated the room, had been removed, and rows of rented, folding chairs set up in its place. The meeting was an important one for Carlson. It was a big project his company was bidding on, and he wanted it badly. Jasmin was just cleaning the oil from her glasses, using the inside hem of her skirt, when the meeting came to order.
Carlson took his place behind the podium at the front of the room. After putting on his mask of smiling confidence, he opened the meeting with his customary greeting, and perfunctory remarks before getting down to specifics, and turning the proceedings over to Jasmin. When he did get around to introducing her, the mask of smiling confidence, somehow, slipped away, and, as he announced her name, it was with a dubious, and even fearful, look in her direction.
Jasmin felt hardly encouraged as she rose, and began making her way to the front of the room, carrying her notes in one hand, and her glasses in the other. The gasps, and muffled conversation, that followed her as she passed one row of attendees after another didn't help any either.
As she approached the podium, however, something told Jasmin not to try to hide herself behind it. So, when she arrived, she placed her notes on the lectern, and then simply stood beside it, letting the presence of her massive, overly muscular body have whatever impact on the group that it was going to have. As she stood squarely in full view, her hyperengorged physique thrusting her arms out from her sides, the hushed murmuring quickly gave way to a nerve racking silence. Jasmin cast her eyes over the room full of gape-eyed, slack-jawed men, and women. The sight of all those open mouths gave her an idea.
"Goodness," she said quietly, yet loudly enough to be heard. Then, with a sly little smile, she continued, "here it is after lunch, and everyone still looks . . . so hungry."
There was a freeze dried moment of deadly silence as the significance of her statement seemed to require time to register in the minds of her visually stunned audience. Almost as suddenly then, there was a shock wave of tension relieving laughter that reverberated throughout the room. Everyone relaxed, including Jasmin, and even Carlson, and the business of the meeting was able to proceed.
The group quickly got over the unexpected surprise of Jasmin's extraordinary presence, and focused on the content of her presentation as she lead them through Carlson & Associates proposal for the intended building project. They followed her carefully throughout, and, afterward, plied her with questions which Carlson noticed to be more intelligent, and informed, than those usually encountered at such meetings. He had greatly feared that the group would be alienated by the way Jasmin looked, but, far from being put off, everyone in the meeting seemed to be positively drawn to her, and had apparently paid close attention to everything she'd said.
When the meeting adjourned, several of the attendees made a point of approaching Jasmin to either discuss a last detail of the project that was particular to their field of concern and/or compliment her on the way she'd conducted the session. Some of the people merely lingered close by, wanting to be near the unusual looking, yet charming, young Asian woman. Jasmin answered their questions as best she could, and accepted the attention with the grace that was indigenous to her heritage.
When she was finally free, Jasmin returned to the podium to retrieve her notes, and was met there by Mr. Carlson. Feeling obliged to remain as long as he was there, Jasmin stood by the lectern with her notes in hand, and her eyes downcast. She felt good about how the conference had gone, but she was also, at the same time, painfully aware that feeling 'good' was not the same as feeling confident. It was, after all, the first time she'd soloed in representing the company on a project, let alone such a major project. She knew that Carlson had taken on a considerable amount of risk in entrusting her with it, and she sincerely hoped that he wouldn't see her transformed appearance as having compromised her already proven effectiveness in the conference room.
While apparently unmindful of his youthful executive's subdued discomforture, Carlson regarded her for a long time without speaking. Feeling it best not to look at him directly, Jasmin endured his prolonged, enigmatic gaze. She concentrated on breathing quietly, for two very obvious reasons, as well as on not moving a single outlandishly defined muscle. At length, the company's founder, and chief, released her from visual scrutiny, and watched as the last few attendees passed out of the room into the isleway.
"Good job, Jasmin," he said simply enough without looking at her.
Could you have managed, perhaps, just a liiittle less feeling on that, Jasmin thought sarcastically before she tentatively ventured, "You . . . don't sound so sure about that, sir."
"No, really," said Carlson, looking up at her.
The sound of her voice seemed to have awakened him from another thought, or thoughts. He returned to gazing in the direction of the isleway beyond the door.
"It went a lot better than I was expecting actually," he went on. "Even better that I'd originally expected before . . . uh . . . "
His voice trailed off for an awkward moment as he struggled to find, then found a way to say to her, "I'm just having trouble adjusting to your . . . uh . . . new look."
Jasmin could barely stifle a sigh of relief. It was nice to know that her employer was, at least, willing to keep an open mind regarding her 'new look'. It made it easier.
"Well, I guess that makes two of us then, sir," she told him easily.
Carlson glanced up at her, and smiled kindly as Jasmin reached toward the lectern to retrieve her glasses. His smile vanished, however, when he noticed the enormous, and minutely detailed, musculature of her extended arm. Jasmin froze when she saw his jaw tighten. Her jaw tightened when she saw him frown. Her own brow knit an instant before Carlson looked up at her.
"Wear a jacket next time," he advised her somewhat awkwardly.
The older man calmly walked from the room without another word, or without looking back. Jasmin stood there with her hand resting on the lectern for awhile, feeling dazed, and tired. She'd spent so much time preparing for this conference, and, with the added stress of her transformation, she'd had herself so wrought up over it that, now that it was over, she could finally relax. She felt her energy slip away to be replaced by a not entirely unwelcome mood of ennui.
'Next time', she thought to herself, and then she allowed herself to smile.
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