Tease to Please Ch. 02

"Elise," she heard Doctor Peters say, suddenly breaking from his awkward Japanese. "Come meet Doctor Yamamoto!"

Elise lurched forward out of her reverie and immediately stumbled in her tall shoes. She fell down hard on the concrete floor and only just managed to avoid hitting her head on a nearby stool.

"Oh! Elise, are you okay?" Doctor Peters called out with genuine alarm. Elise sensed him rushing to her aid as she hurriedly erected herself back up onto the narrow stiletto sandals. Before she had even fully recovered she felt embraced by Doctor Peters' giant hands. They gripped her by the shoulders and Elise welcomed their steadying mass.

"I'm okay," she whispered meekly, "No, really. I guess I'm just not used to these heels yet. I'm so embarrassed!"

Doctor Peters' kielbasa-sized digits squeezed her upper arms tightly before letting go. She glanced down to review her outfit again to make sure it was still clean. She could feel her face burning hot with shame, and her left knee hurt too. But at least she hadn't torn a hole in her stockings or anything. She carefully smoothed her miniskirt back down and then raised her gaze toward the doorway. She tried to smile at Doctor Yamamoto in a way that would be seen as an apology.

Doctor Yamamoto looked back at her without any expression at all. Then he began to glide forward. Elise thought for a moment that he really was gliding, on wheels or something. He moved noiselessly across the space between them in such precise, measured strides that his upper body did not bounce at all. Elise had never seen anyone move like that. It struck her as completely alien.

Elise instinctively straightened her posture as Doctor Yamamoto got closer and closer. Wordlessly, he began to circle her, scrutinizing every minute detail of her appearance at close range. She twisted her head around, trying to follow his orbit, but he refused to meet her gaze no matter how intently she smiled at him. He lingered behind her for a long time.

Elise nervously shifted her weight from as the silence began to feel awkward. She noticed the sound of her stockings scuffing against one another between her thighs. She didn't know what to do with her hands. She struggled to stand still. It felt like a she was undergoing a military inspection. When Doctor Yamamoto finally completed his circle he stood directly in front of her and marched his gaze very slowly from her face all the way down to her feet and back again. Elise tried to make herself as tall as possible. Doctor Yamamoto was about one inch taller than her in these heels, but his posture was so incredibly erect that Elise felt compelled to emulate him.

Doctor Yamamoto at last looked directly into her eyes. Elise tried to double the intensity of her smile and reached out to shake his hand. Still Doctor Yamamoto said nothing, so Elise blurted out an overly-enunciated greeting:

"Hi! It is a pleasure to meet you Doctor Yamamoto. My name is Elise!"

Doctor Yamamoto still did not say anything. Or move. Except, Elise thought, maybe his chin dipped ever so slightly toward her. Was that a bow? She pulled back her offered hand and folded it into her other in front of her skirt. Was she supposed to bow back? What was appropriate?

Elise began to panic. She hurriedly dipped her head forward, bouncing her chin once on her chest. Then she straightened up tall again. Her brain screamed: "What the hell is going on here?"

Doctor Yamamoto broke the silence with a single, loud word of Japanese. Then he spun on his heel and glided back toward the door.

Elise turned to Doctor Peters in shock. "What did I do?" she whispered. "He wouldn't even shake my hand -- he hates me!"

"No, no you're fine!" Doctor Peters reassured her. "He doesn't believe it's polite to touch when you first meet someone, that's all. I didn't remember to tell you that beforehand. Go with him, though. He wants you to follow him!"

"Really?" Elise whispered franticly, "Are you coming too?"

"No. He'll show you around upstairs, just like we talked about. But Elise, don't crowed him... stay about a yard behind him and off to one side when you walk with him. He'll think you're more polite that way. Now go! Follow him."

"Okay, okay, I'm going!" Elise squealed as she scurried toward the door. Her high heels clacked loudly across the concrete.

"Elise!" Doctor Peters called after her, "Shhhh!! Try to walk quietly!"

Elise checked-up her long strides and tried to be more careful, but her shoes were so awkwardly tall that she found it impossible to walk quietly. The sharp pointed heels clicked and scraped on the concrete floor with every step.

"Shit," she thought to herself, "I'm never going to get this right!"

Elise finally caught up to Doctor Yamamoto just as he turned the corner at the end of the main hallway and began to ascend the wide staircase leading to the second floor. Elise looked up the long flight of stairs and swore again under her breath. She clutched the handrail with one hand and held the hem of her miniskirt with the other, trying to keep it down. As she carefully climbed the concrete staircase, she prayed none of the 1st floor employees would walk by and see her from below. She could only imagine the show she was putting on as the miniskirt inevitably bunched higher and higher, well clear of her stockings.

For the next hour Elise dutifully followed Doctor Yamamoto around the 2nd floor laboratories. She couldn't understand a word he was saying but even so the tour was very impressive. There were clear plastic over-pressure chambers in some of the rooms, and every surface appeared surgically clean. Never once did Doctor Yamamoto attempt to speak to her directly. He just talked loudly into the air as if educating the instruments and machines all around him. He pointed out two employees along the way. One of them was working inside what appeared to be a huge walk-in freezer. He wore a large white snowsuit that looked very uncomfortable. The other sat in front of a collage of nine flat screen monitors and only broke his gaze away from them long enough to give Elise a quick up-and-down glance.

Between the foreign language, the crazy equipment and her constant vigilance about her auto-hiking miniskirt and loud heels, Elise found the hour exhausting.

When it was all over, Doctor Yamamoto led her back to the top of the staircase and gestured for her to descend alone.

"Okaaaaay," Elise mentally reflected as she tiptoed back down to the lower floor. "That was bizarre."

Doctor Peters greeted her warmly upon her return to his office. "How was it?" he asked with a smile.

"Um..." Elise hesitated. "It was interesting."

"Did you meet Hiro and Kazutoshi?"

"I think so. One of them was in some sort of a freezer I think."

"Yeah, that was probably Kazutoshi. Some of the genetically-modified enzymes Doctor Yamamoto works with are only active at low temperatures. Kazutoshi is the one he trusts to handle the physical experiments. Hiro mostly crunches numbers."

"Yeah, okay..." Elise trailed off. She flopped into her desk chair with a sigh and began unbuckling the ankle straps of her shoes. Her feet were killing her already. Walking around in such high heels was going to take some getting used to, she realized. She began to massage her feet. Then the phone on Doctor Peters' desk rang.

"Oh look, it's Doctor Yamamoto," Arthur remarked before lifting the receiver to his ear. Elise's ears perked up.

Doctor Peters greeted Doctor Yamamoto in Japanese and then quickly glanced up at Elise. He seemed to be listening to a long speech on the other end of the phone. Elise noticed the wrinkles in Doctor Peters' forehead deepen before he slowly spun around in his swivel chair to face the wall of books behind him. The phone call seemed to go on for several minutes before Doctor Peters could get more than a few words in.

A cold, sinking dread began to take hold in Elise's belly. She hoped the conversation they were having wasn't about her, because Doctor Peters' tone seemed very apologetic. Was he suffering criticism about her? The thought immediately made Elise feel guilty. There really was no other possible explanation. What, she wondered, had she done wrong? She could hear Doctor Yamamoto's voice getting louder and louder, until it was positively blasting out from the handset of Doctor Peters' phone.

"Poor Doctor Peters!" Elise thought. He was taking a tongue-lashing for whatever error she had committed. She resolved to find some way to make it up to him.

When Doctor Yamamoto finally ran out of things to complain about, the two men hung up. Arthur slowly spun his chair back around to face the room. His eyes landed on Elise. She had removed her shoes and stockings and was standing barefoot in front of her desk, looking up at him.

"I am so sorry Doctor Peters," she began. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop but I'm guessing all that yelling was about me?"

"Well," Arthur stalled, "he wasn't really yelling. He just gets loud sometimes."

Elise could see the worry-lines around his eyes. He looked tired.

"Please tell me what I did wrong and I promise it will never happen again. I'm sure I can fix it, whatever it is."

"Well... it's kind of hard to explain."

Elise walked forward and stepped up onto the dais. She came right around to Arthur's chair, placed her left hand on his desk's writing surface and leaned her weight onto it. Her long bare legs crossed over one another and her hips adopted a rakish angle. Arthur felt his gaze drawn inexorably to her naked thighs and the slim triangular shadow cast between them by her tiny skirt. Her skin looked so creamy soft, he thought.

"Tell me what's wrong." Elise urged him. "Please!"

"Umm, it's nothing," Arthur demurred.

"No, it's something," Elise insisted. She leaned forward and put her right hand on Arthur's shoulder. "You've got to tell me."

Arthur leaned back, suddenly feeling she was too close. Elise withdrew her hand, but then she stepped sideways between Arthur and his desk and hopped her little round bottom up onto it.

Arthur's mind reeled at how close she was to him. She crossed her legs tightly above the knee and folder her hands in her lap to avoid flashing him.

"Okay, umm...." Arthur began, leaning back in his chair as far as possible. He scrambled for the words he needed to convey Doctor Yamamoto's crazy concerns without totally freaking Elise out. He desperately wanted her to stay the whole summer, but he also needed to appease his insane partner. It was going to be a balancing act, he knew.

Elise sat up straighter, exposing more of her taut midriff, and waited for him to continue. Her bare feet dangled above the carpet, gently swinging between the cuffs of Arthur's corduroy slacks.

"Doctor Yamamoto," Arthur began carefully, "seems to think you are showing insufficient respect for your position here. He wants you... to exhibit more pride."

"What...?! What does that even mean?" Elise blurted.

"Just let me finish. "

"Sorry."

"He mentioned several things that he felt were... inadequate."

Arthur noticed Elise flinch at the mention of that word. Her eyes opened very wide, but she remained silent.

"Don't worry, it's all fixable I think," Arthur continued quickly. "He mentioned posture. He said you slouch... which he feels undermines the level of dignity appropriate for the office. He also thought your hair was messy. And... um, he said it was inappropriate that he could see your bra."

"Oh my god!" blurted Elise. Her cheeks flushed immediately to scarlet.

"He said it's not appropriate to display undergarments at work... which, I mean, on that one I can kind-of see his point."

"But, but... look at this top," Elise whined franticly. She raised her hands up to her shoulders and demonstrated how every time she pulled the baby doll sleeves of her blouse up over her bra straps, they fell right back off to either side.

"Yes but even without that problem, I can see your whole bra through the fabric," Arthur informed her. "You can?!"

Elise looked down and swore under her breath as she flattened the gauzy fabric against her chest. Her bra, she realized, was obvious. Despite her mounting embarrassment, Elise lifted her gaze back up to Doctor Peters' and opened her mouth to defend herself.

But then she noticed real anxiety on the Doctor's big square face. She hated to see him taking the heat for her like this. Instead of arguing, she hopped down off the desk and bent over him, placing her small hands astride his shoulders. She leaned in close until her face was right in front of his.

"I'll do better, Doctor Peters, I promise. I don't want you getting yelled at on my account. I won't slouch anymore. I'll do my hair right and I'll make sure I don't have any wardrobe issues tomorrow."

Arthur couldn't think what to say. He was frozen by her sudden boldness and the proximity of her pretty face. So he just said: "Thanks Elise."

With that conversation over, Elise walked barefoot in her cat-like way back down to her own desk. She pulled out a tissue from her purse and pretended, for Doctor Peters' sake, to blow her nose. What she really did was wipe back the tears that had sprung from her eyes. Doctor Yamamoto's crazy criticisms had stung, especially delivered through the vessel of Doctor Peters' disappointment.

Elise steeled her resolve not to let him down again. She tried to focus on getting her uniforms organized so that tomorrow would go better. Her first decision was that she would leave all her new clothes in the walk-in closet rather than shuttling them back and forth on the train every day. That way she would always have access to the complete collection in case anything went wrong. Her friend's apartment in the City was so cramped anyway that the fewer things she stored there the better.

Elise studiously went through each garment and removed all the stickers and tags. Then she set about organizing them onto shelves and hangars in the closet. Throughout the afternoon it never occurred to her to change into her normal clothes. Without the tall stilettos and stockings she realized she didn't mind the stretchy skirt and cropped blouse. They certainly allowed her freedom of movement.

Arthur didn't mind them either. He ordered a lunch delivery for everyone on the 1st floor and spent the remainder of the day happily guiding his nearly-naked summer intern through various computing tasks that he expected her to master in the coming days. He relished how comfortable she seemed with his big hands' occasional, absent-minded touching. In fact, he noticed that she was prone to the same bad habit. She would often put a hand on his arm or back whenever they huddled around a table or computer screen.

All afternoon the two of them remain undisturbed. Arthur fought back urges he was embarrassed to name. He wanted to trace his fingers over Elise's shallow sacroiliac dimples. He wanted to pry apart her miniature, tight-looking ass. But he knew he had to resist. He had already convinced himself that he would simply enjoy the view this summer and he planned to stick to that plan. He figured he could always relieve his pent-up sexual tensions later when he was alone. This was still a far better arrangement, he knew, than not having Elise around at all.