in the time of Aristotle, it was true in the time of Keynes, and it is true today. Stability depends on a strong middle class that can propel demand. We will not see this if growth does not lead to decent jobs, or if growth rewards the favored few over the marginalized many.”]
[“Ultimately, employment and equity are building blocks of economic stability and prosperity, of political stability and peace. This goes to the heart of the IMF’s mandate. It must be placed at the heart of the policy agenda.”- The Global Jobs Crisis, IMF Speech 4/13/2011]
The door of the office opened swiftly, and was shut and locked with a businesslike click.
“Forgive me, ma petite, the big heads have brains like fromage and adore nothing more than the sound of their own voices. I thought dinner would never end.”
Jane spun the chair slowly to face her interlocutor. IMF guy was tossing his overcoat on a couch. Turning back, he paused and blinked in surprise. Well, after all, Jane did present an eyeful. She wore a severe yet supple leather suit, vintage Armani, with a pencil skirt and one button blazer, the plunging neckline of which revealed no blouse or undergarment. Her normally flowing hair was captured in a severe bun and surmounted by a chic leather cocktail hat adorned with a spotted veil. Beneath the desk she sported wickedly high-heeled Manolo Blahnik booties. Needless to say her elegant hands were sheathed in four-button-length Italian leather gloves. All black, from hat to heels. Of course.
Jane placed the pages back on the desk, next to an original edition of Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being,” a set of fur handcuffs, and a BlackBerry.
“Nice speech,” she said, sitting back in the chair, making a steeple of her gloved fingers.
“Nice dress.” He rejoined with gallic aplomb. “It had to be written.” He reached up to loosen his tie and gestured toward the speech, “But it will never be heard.”
“And yet it is just what the world needs to hear,” Jane rested her arms on the arms of the chair and swiveled ever so slightly from side to side, like a snake charmer mesmerizing a cobra.
“And that is precisely why tomorrow it will be turned into confetti for some future parade. It will be tossed in front of your Macy’s balloons like rose petals before an idiot bride. We must have spectacle. Truth is for street sweepers only.”
“Not for quadrillionaires in quiet rooms?”
He smiled. “I will not insult you by saying don’t worry your pretty little head about such things.”
“Too late. You just did.” She got up and walked around the desk to stand within arm’s reach.
“Was I expecting you?” he asked rhetorically. Staring into his eyes, her face just inches from his, she removed his tie, unbuttoned another button on his custom tailored shirt, and pointed to the chair.
“Sit.” He sat, bemused. “Comfy?” He nodded. “In a minute,” she said, clasping one fur cuff around his left wrist and locking it securely, “I’m going to ask you to tell me a word.” She walked behind the chair, gently twisting his arm downward and to one side. “That word will be your safe word,” she continued, running her hand down his right arm and placing it into the same position, after which she cuffed his other wrist so that his arms were gently but firmly fastened behind him. She stepped back and surveyed her prisoner. “If at any time you want to stop what is happening, all you have to do is say that one magic word.” She bent down again, this time leaning on the arms of his chair so that his gaze, if it left hers, could reach far down the front of her jacket; and she breathed into his ear, “Do you understand?” He nodded. She had set one foot on either side of his bespoke wingtips. She was, in effect, straddling his legs. “But first,” she said, keenly aware that he was becoming aroused, “I want you to tell me what you want.”
He closed his eyes, brushing her cheek with his, intoxicated by the fugitive, musky perfume of her skin, leather, and hair. “Oh, you know, this is all so sudden. Suppose you surprise me.”
She straightened with a slow seductive sigh and touched the BlackBerry. Joe Cocker’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On” began to play. Instead of stripping, though, Jane leaned against the desk and crossed her arms.
“Suppose I tell you what I want?” She arched her eyebrows.
“Ladies, first, by all means,” he pulled a little at the handcuffs, growing restive as his anticipation mounted.
“I want you and all your Bilderberg mates to stop what you’re doing,” Jane said, slowly and deliberately, dropping her vamp act, cold. “Just stop.”
“Are you mad?” IMF guy began to go red in the face. “There are guards just outside.”
Jane raised her eyes to the ceiling and her hands to her chignon, which was secured by an unobtrusive and highly ornamental pair of stilettos. As the glory of her hair fell around her, she smiled. “I was wondering if you have a heart. Shall we find out? Besides,” she tilted her head provocatively, “I’m sure they’ve heard worse. Now where were we?” She tapped her temple reflectively with one stiletto. “Ah yes. What I want. I want you to give your speech.”
“Better to kill me now,” IMF guy growled. “Because if you don’t, they will.”
“I am not your enemy,” Jane insisted. “I like you, I even find you sexy in an earthy, Nietzschean sort of way.” He made a rude noise. “You’ve been to Greece, you’ve been to Spain. That speech says that you know the harm you’re doing. So do the right thing for a change. Go ahead and tell the truth.”
“Who are you?” IMF guy was pulling actively at his bonds, but the cuffs had a special resistance-activated feature. He only succeeded in making them tighter.
“A question I ask myself every day,” Jane admitted. “But the question we should be asking is - who do we want to be? Do you want to be the guy who caused a world of misery or the guy who made it stop?”
“You talk like a backward child. A Pollyanna. This thing cannot be stopped, only a child would think otherwise,” he said heavily.
“Well, the children do think otherwise,” Jane said. “There seem to be quite a lot of them, and generations to come. Whereas you are all of - six thousand? Twenty? Even one hundred thousand. Against billions who just want a decent life. That’s not just bad morals, it’s bad math.”
“Except we own the armies.”
“Except we are in the same room, alone, you and I.” Jane pointed her daggers at his exposed chest, with its virile mat of grey-white hair. “Who was it said, ‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable?’”
“Kennedy,” IMF guy said. “And we know what happened to him.”
“Bon. You are a philosopher,” Jane said. “And coming from the land of the guillotine you can well imagine what will happen to you and any number of your friends if the rest of the world should ever find out - about Kennedy, about all of it. So why not just cut the crap and play nice? Before we’re all dead. That is what I was sent to say. Oh - and that the NSA has been recording your exploits for years and we managed to get copies of just about everything,” she ended dutifully.
“So there is a ‘we’,” IMF guy pounced.
“Mais oui,” Jane confirmed readily enough, “as I said.”
“A rag-tag few,” he hazarded.
“In your dreams,” Jane contradicted. “We walk among you. In greater numbers every day. Like your French resistance. Only global.”
He looked skeptical. “Suppose I relay your message. Suppose I give the speech. What then?”
“Then,” Jane said, bending to kiss him lingeringly on the lips, “you will have been a very good boy.”
“Humph,” he grunted. “Virtue is its own reward, is it? I thought as much.”
“If I can’t sell you a vision of enlightened self-interest, how about a market-based approach? Now for a limited time only, we are offering you, yes you, the deal of a lifetime. First dibs on a ground-floor opportunity. Think about it. Among politicians and bureaucrats, who else
is telling the people what they already know to be true? Who else is not lying through their teeth? You will have a brand new virgin field entirely to yourself. There are gains to be made,” Jane pointed out, taking one last look at the skyline of New York. “Run for president, why don’t you?”
“The avant-garde of anything is usually wiped out - hence the term ‘bleeding edge’. As an economist, I know it is the second wave adopters who fare the best. You ask a lot, cherie. And you left your phone,” he called after her, as she turned to go.
“In case you need me,” she said. “Just give a whistle. You know how to whistle don’t you?” She arched her eyebrows and blew him a kiss.
“What about my safe word?” he joked, leaning forward in an attempt to slip the handcuffs over the back of the chair and so release himself. “Not to mention the bloody key.”
“Welcome to the real world,” Jane said, opening the door. “Where there is no such thing. And where, at the moment, not a one of us is free.”
18 Things Ain’t What They Used to Be
“You had to kiss him?” The moment she closed the door to the inner office, there was John in a black jumpsuit, standing over a pile of bodyguards, inert, unconscious, and generously bound with duct tape. John, for his part, was clearly pissed. “So now we’re even. Is that it?”
Jane made a sound of irritation. “You had to listen? I told you