Hardly Working (10 page)

“I've got some broccoli.”

“I can eat that.”

“I'll prepare it for you.”

Five minutes later everything was on the table. Mike began to dig in, no formalities. He ate like a starving man. Dawn eyed the broccoli with suspicion. “How did you get this cooked so fast?”

“Microwave,” I said.

She shook her head violently. “Oh, no, I can't eat this. Not if it's been microwaved.”

I shrugged and went into the kitchen. I picked up the salad bowl, brought it out and held it under her nose. “You can eat this. This is star grass, red lettuce and rocket leaves. They were all cultivated in my mother's vegetable garden over on the island. No pesticides. My mother, as Mikey will tell you, is perfect at everything she does.”

Mike nodded vehemently. “Absolutely, Dawn, you don't have to worry if it came from Marjory's garden.”

Dawn plucked up a lettuce leaf and nibbled at it. “You're right. You can taste the difference. You can tell it was grown organically.”

Sure. Grown organically for the big-city mass market by
my friends at Safeway up the street. What Dawn didn't know wouldn't hurt her. Well, only a little.

It went downhill from there. Over the goulash, I got to listen to an in-depth analysis of Dawn's health. It started with her headaches and degenerated into a complete rundown of her periods, the length and size of them, the measures that had to be taken to lessen her pain, and the fact that they'd have to hurry up if they wanted children because Dawn's uterus was a complex affair, more complex than any other woman's on this planet.

I kept a big stupid grin on my face the whole time and to numb what was left of my senses, I brought out the brandy bottle and poured myself huge slugs. Then I watched as Mike did the same. As they talked on, I drifted over to my window. My neighbor was exercising again, amidst the cats and goats. Soon I was drifting into a strange fantasy in which my well-toned neighbor had magically gone from gay to straight and given up Satan.

Sunday

The following morning was sunny and crisp. My hangover and I were going for a jog. I was just pulling on my Nikes when Joey appeared at my French doors. He had his mug of coffee in one hand and copy of
Variety
in the other. He pushed past me, marched along to my kitchen, back up into my living room, looked around and asked, “Did they catch them?”

“Who?”

“The people who broke into your apartment last night.”

“I had a dinner party.”

“Anybody I know?”

“Yes, but not very interesting. Except from an anthropological point of view. Ex-true love Mike and new wife Dawn. It was so awful, Joey. This woman he's married, I think she's been genetically modified. She's very small and
wan. Like a pixie really. Did you know that pixies have very bad periods that last for at least five weeks? I'm not inviting them over ever, ever again. I don't know how he married somebody like that. Mike's completely lost it.”

Joey shuddered. “Glad I couldn't come. It sounds fucking awful. Have you ever noticed that most married couples look as though they'd been lobotomized? Until they start having affairs, that is. Count yourself lucky to have gotten rid of Mike.”

“Oh, I do,” I said, wistfully.

Joey stretched himself out on my couch with his feet on the armrest. I went over and yanked them off. “I'll bet you don't put your feet up on your armrests. What's wrong with your apartment?” I said.

“I like yours better. I like the clutter. My place is too tidy. It doesn't feel lived in.”

“That's because it isn't. You do all your living here. See you later. If anyone calls, tell them I'll be back in an hour. I'm going for a run.”

On the back porch of my building, in the brisk gleaming fall air, I did a few warm-ups on the porch rail then forced my leaden legs to get moving. I sprinted sluggishly down the stairs, along the side path, turned the corner leading into a tight passageway, and ran straight into my neighbor. He was coming and I was going and it was a huge flub (Joey's and my word for running smack into someone you've gawked at from afar). The big body bump became a spontaneous embrace, because we had to grab each other to get our balance.

Then we dodged back and forth five or six times until he said, “Wanna dance?”

I grinned. He placed his hands on my shoulders and said, “Okay now. You go first and I won't move.”

I had a little twinge of sadness. It was a pity that the best ones were taken, by other men, or other women. We passed
each other slowly. But I forced myself to be optimistic. I turned around quickly and shouted, just as he had almost reached the end of the path, “Oh wait, we're having a block party on Halloween. I'm letting everyone on the street know. In case you happen to be around that night. And spread the word.”

Over his shoulder, he said, “Block party, eh? Okay.”

But he seemed apprehensive. Maybe he was worried it would cut into his Black Mass? Or his rendezvous with a goat?

I nodded and ran off in the direction of Kits Beach and the new address that Mike had written down for me the night before. I needed to check it out. My plan was to whizz past their place faster than the speed of light taking everything in from the corner of my eye but keeping my gaze straight ahead as if I couldn't possibly be running by there except by pure chance. Mike had been a jogger when I knew him so there was the risk of running into him, but I was willing to run it. I doubted that I would bump into Dawn jogging though. Her body was so smooth and tiny, with no muscular definition whatsoever. She probably didn't use her legs to get her around. She probably just opened up her transparent fairy wings and fluttered over to her destination.

Kits Beach was Pickup Heaven that day. A strip of deep blue ruffled ocean separated the green park with its russet trees from the glassy West End high-rises gleaming against distant blue mountains. The long stretch of beachside park was crowded, guys and girls out in full flirtation regalia, joggers in the skimpiest sportswear, dog-walkers using their animals as an excuse, even a few diehard topless sunbathers taking up the patches where there was shelter from the wind. I wanted to shout at them, “It's all a trick of nature. It's a trap. Autumn is the natural mating season for human beings. Don't fall for it.”

I started to worry when I turned the corner onto Mike and Dawn's street. It was too nice, a small Yuppyville of big classy renovated houses the whole way along. As I approached Mike and Dawn's place, my plan of racing past fell to pieces. I just had to stop and gawk. In the past, Mike's accommodations had always been a little funky, in the grottiest sense of the word, two-story duplexes of scientific interest (fungi and silverfish), no balconies, no surrounding gardens, no fireplaces, no curlicues, no Bauhaus chic, no character. Because Mike was thinking of other things, of his studies in marine mammal science, of his career. My first night with Mike had been spent on a sheet spread out on the wall-to-wall carpet in an otherwise empty apartment.

Mike and Dawn had a whole three-story house to themselves. There was only one doorbell. I peeked at the name on the post box and there was only theirs. It was a huge old converted family home with lots of new cedar siding, three glassed-in balconies looking seaward, useful for tanning on winter days, brass fixtures and railings, and more southern exposure than I could dream of.

I wanted to hate him. He'd used my heart as one of the rungs in his ladder to success. But when I saw that house, it just wasn't possible to hate him properly. I knew something about his taste in women. He liked them well rounded. He'd married for money and now he'd have to live with the consequences of his actions, fairy wings and all. I turned around and jogged toward home, my legs still feeling like sticks of lead.

When I got back from my run, Joey was prone on my couch.

“There were two calls while you were out of the office, Miss Nichols.”

“Oh, really? Tell. Tell.”

“Yes, okay. The first was your Greek Food Pervert. He thought I was you when I answered. Okay, I confess I did a very good imitation of you.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he wanted to come over and lick your thighs and I told him that it could take forever, given their size, but that if he wanted to come over and lick mine it would only take a quarter of the time.”

“Thanks a lot, Joey. You're a
big
help. What was the second call?”

“Oh, some very boring-sounding straight macho type called Trutch. Said he wants you to come into the office.”

“T
rutch,” I nearly spat. “Ian Trutch?”

“Something like that.”

“Ian Trutch phoned me at home on a Sunday?”

“Uh-oh. Trouble.”

“What else did he say, Joey?”

Joey rolled his eyes. “Oh, God. She likes him. Dinah's got the hots for him. Get out the antidepressants, we're in for the big one, the World Expo special roller-coaster ride through emotional hell.”

“Joey, c'mon. He's the enemy. He's come directly from The Dark Side to ruin our lives. So what did he say?”

“Now we're going to get the oh-so-boring daily descriptions of his every move, what he wore, the way he looked at her,
when
he bothered to look at her, the way he poured his cream into his coffee.”

“He doesn't take cream. He takes his coffee black and steaming but I could care less.”

“It's worse than I thought.”

“But he does drive a Ferrari, black with beige upholstery. I've never been out with a guy who drives a Ferrari.”

“Dinah, you've hardly ever been out with a guy. Period.”

“How can you say that? What about Mike?”

“Oh, I don't mean the serious heartbreak kind of guy. I mean the fun kind. The use once and throw away disposable kind.”

“I envy you, Joey, I wish I could but I can't.”

“It takes practice, lots and lots of practice.”

And then came an anxious hour, waiting for Ian Trutch to call me back. Much as I distrusted him, I still wanted to impress him. Show him how I absolutely, but absolutely stylishly, did not care. Joey gave a sports announcer's play-by-play of me showering and choosing my clothes.

And then the call came.

“And she scores,” yelled Joey above the ringing telephone.

“Quiet,” I blasted, then said sweetly into the mouthpiece, “Dinah Nichols here.”

“Dinah, Ian Trutch.”

“Hello… Mr. Trutch.”

“Call me Ian.”

“Ian.”

“Sorry to ask you this on a Sunday, but I'm down at the office right now, and I can see that there are a few things that need a working over.”

A working over?

“And you're the woman I need. Right now if you don't mind.” His tone was playful. “I've got some of the campaign materials right here in front of me. Do you mind coming down and briefing me on them?” he asked.

I didn't want to sound eager. At the risk of being fired, I said, “It's Sunday, that famous day of rest. I had other plans,” I lied.

“It won't take long at all. I'll pick you up. I need a break from all this paperwork. Where do you live?”

I told him. “Park at the front,” I said, “The Pataran Café's on the ground floor. I'll come out to meet you.”

I was ready for the enemy. I'd been ready ever since I first Googled his name, ever since I'd saved the Web page with his picture to my Images file. I was ready from my tight crimson sweater with the low neckline, my hipster jeans that shifted the focus from my thighs and showed off my trim waistline, my open and unbelted Burberry and its Sunday casual look, right down to my black lace underwear, which, I confess, was a case of my body, not my mind, choosing my clothes.

An hour later, even Joey was impressed that I was going to be picked up by a guy driving a Ferrari. “Now Dinah, I suggest that before he gets here, you go down to the corner and buy a can of gasoline, then take a cab down to Green World International, pour the stuff around your office and light a match, then hurry back here so he can pick you up. That way, you should be arriving just as the news team reaches the scene of the crime, and everyone watching local TV will be able to see you riding in that car.”

“Thanks, Joey. I know I can always count on you for good practical advice.”

When Ian pulled up in front of my building and honked, I took the stairs two at a time. I shot down the back path and around the corner and BLAM, almost ran into my neighbor again. He was carrying something live and off-white in his arms, and yelled, “Careful.”

The thing started bleating and kicking.

“It's a…goat. Sorry. I'm really sorry,” I said.

Sorry, Son of Satan.

“We're okay here. Just got to get a grip…calm ourselves down a little.” The goat kicked in his arms.

Hmmm. He shared a Royal We with an animal. He iden
tified with a goat. I have to say it piqued my curiosity, given that I'd been a sister to cats, dogs and ponies.

He went on, “We might need to put a traffic light on this path.” Still gripping onto the goat tightly, he set it down on the ground and kept one arm around its neck. He kneeled down next to the animal, stroked it, looked up at me, gave my clothes some close scrutiny, and smiled.

I gave him a nervous little wave, said, “See you,” and headed toward Ian's car.

My neighbor was still kneeling and watching, now with a look of awe on his face. It was either the Ferrari he was admiring, or its driver. Ian Trutch looked uber-gorgeous leaning against the car, in a vampiresque sort of way. He didn't fool me though.

Ian actually came around and opened the door for me. In my Mike days, it had always been my Mini with Mike in the driver's seat, and when we were out together in public, Mike running five paces ahead of me while I hurried to keep up. His legs were long. Mine were short. I had always put that rushing ahead of his down to childlike enthusiasm. Now I put it down to childishness.

As Ian helped me into the passenger seat, I knew it was an “on” day, one of those special days you can feel down to your heels. You know, even before you leave the house, that you're going to attract the right kind of attention. Because you just don't care about any of the men around you. You feel so great that it absolutely does not matter whether you have a boyfriend or not. In fact, you're beginning to think that you're much better off without one. Boyfriends can be so oppressive, especially when the world belongs to you and you're running free in it, when you're flying. And naturally, it's in the male's predatorial makeup to want to bring any free-flying bird to the ground. And the more he chases you, the further and higher you want to go.

It was a giddy feeling.

As we rode along in Ian's Ferrari, he put some old soul tunes on his stereo. The volume was so high it was impossible to talk. It made people on the street turn and look at us, which suited my mood nicely.

We roared toward the office, zooming and weaving dangerously between the other cars. As we careened through the streets, my heart was pounding with excitement, not because I thought Ian Trutch could ever be more to me than a higher management dictator who viewed me as a corporate lackey, but because for the first time since breaking up with Mike, I didn't look over wishing it were Mike in the driver's seat of the car.

When we arrived, Ian politely ushered me ahead of him and up to the boardroom, where he had papers arranged in various piles along the big table.

He picked up a printed sheet. “This. Your list of guests for the next fund-raiser, to be held at the…Space Centre?”

“Where did you get that? From my desk? That's my personal list,” I accused. “I haven't finished working on it.”

“It belongs to the company. When you're in the office,
you
belong to the company.”

“You're joking.”

“Only a little.” He flashed a brief smile, then frowned again as he went over the list.

“Something wrong with it?” I ventured.

He pointed to the first name and said, “Come here and sit down, please.” He patted the seat of the chair beside him. I sat.

“Okay, Dinah, who's this and how much is he worth?”

Ian wanted to know everything about each guest, who they were and most importantly, what kind of financial bracket they were in and how much we'd succeeded in getting them to donate in the past. The interrogation went on for more than half an hour.

And then he asked, “Is there anybody not on this list who should be?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who are the wealthiest people in the city?”

“We try to approach them all, names like Lui, Sosa, the Haljis, Wallis, Cohn, Patterson, and some of them make a donation occasionally. But the elusive one is Hamish Robertson. Nobody's seen him. Nobody even knows what he looks like. He's a recluse.”

“We need to get him on the list.”

I couldn't tell Ian Trutch how right he was.

He picked up another sheet of paper. “Maybe it's my Eastern mentality but can these really be viable? The recycling depot? Tree Canada? The Coalition for Alternative Renewable Energy.”

“Viable?”

“We're supposed to be building business models here, Dinah, not throwing money directly into the ocean.”

“But these are all pilot projects. Start-ups. Some are government funded. They all need time.”

“Mudpuddle? What's that?”

“Aquatic waste-treatment ponds. Where natural organisms convert the toxic substances.”

“Ah.”

“Some of our cities are still dumping raw untreated sewage into the ocean, if you can believe it, and we're going to pay the price. Mudpuddle uses natural elements, zooplankton, phytoplankton, microbial communities, algae, snails, in other words—critters—that are naturally present in aquatic systems, lakes and wetlands, to break down waste. Instead of some of the present systems—sequential batch reactors, mixed oxidant disinfection, membrane systems. But the process still has to be further tested and refined. Biomimicry takes time.”

He gave me a luxurious smile and said, “Biomimicry.
Batch reactors. I love the way you say those words.” He laughed. “There's a bit of a learning curve for me here, Dinah. I hope you'll help me out and explain a few things. So you're saying the priority at this branch is water?”

“Water.”

Ian's mouth turned upward into a little smirk.

“Without water we have nothing. It's the most precious thing on the planet.”

“Yeeeees?” he said, as if waiting to hear the alphabet recited by a small child.

“Mudpuddle will be an important prototype.”
If I could only find the replacement donor.

He pondered it and I could almost hear the gears turning in his head. “Dinah, as you know, I am here to get things running smoothly and profitably. If I find that my crystal ball doesn't give me any figures to back up the feasibility of these projects, then changes will be made.”

I stared at him, incredulous. My whole body tingled with shock symptoms. I was going to have to use all my energies, for the sake of our jobs and future, to try to bring him around.

In a quiet staccato voice, I said, “Science has the figures. Science is
bombarding
us with the figures. Every day. Pollution of every kind. Even the heads of the big oil companies are admitting that they're worried, that there's a problem. Even
their
people are saying we have to change our ways, cut emissions, start sequestering carbon dioxide, find alternative renewable fuels, replant, or it'll be big trouble for the planet. Can't you feel the way the sun burns your skin?”

He grinned. “Financial considerations will always rule the day. There's too much big business involved, too much money at stake. Nobody can afford to run at a loss,” he replied.

“So we might as well lie down and let them screw us. Is that what you're saying?” I'd expected him to be difficult, but not
oblivious
to our mission.

He smiled and I almost had to shade my eyes. He said, fa
talistically, “I think that Green World is going to have to reexamine its priorities. So far, all this Mudpuddle has produced is a deficit. And apparently will go on producing it for a while.”

I felt a little queasy but I wasn't discouraged. I'd had a lot of success in the past at converting even the most hard-hearted and self-centered hedonists to our cause. I leapt back into the fray. “But Mudpuddle is going to be our big presentation at the Space Centre. We're inaugurating it, presenting the experiment results and plans to our foreign counterparts. We've moved offices because of it. We've hired more people. We hired Penelope. We hired…”

Ian sat up straighter. “Ah, yes. Now tell me more about Penelope.”

My least favorite topic.

“Not much to know,” I said. “She went to a Swiss boarding school, and after that, Bennington College where she studied Prudery 400. Her family's in Toronto and all of us here at GWI think that she's a bit of a pain in the ass. I mean, maybe under all that paranoia, there might be a nice girl, in fact, I sense there is. So I just don't understand why she's on this modesty crusade. If she weren't so good at languages, she probably wouldn't have been hired. Because she doesn't try to get along. Not with me, anyway.”

Ian smiled then asked, “Well-to-do?”

“Does it matter?”

He didn't answer me. I had the feeling that Ian Trutch obsessed about money above and beyond the call of duty.

I said, “I'm pretty sure she is. I haven't actually hacked into her parents' bank account but she has all the trappings of wealth. We'll find out soon enough. We systematically hit up all employees for donations, Ian. We ruthlessly persecute people in our own offices all year long, hounding everyone to death, as well as the families of people who work here, and the people we buy coffee from and those who take out
our garbage and bring our mail and anybody else who is unfortunate enough to cross our paths or be the target of our e-mails and phone calls and general harassing, so rest assured that Penelope's parents, if they have a cent to toss our way, will not get off lightly. All of us working here give to the cause. I hope you'll do the same.”

He laughed and tossed back his dark head. He was so beautiful in that slightly evil way, and he was having an attack of charisma. It was all coming in my direction. My body and mind wrestled, everything shifting and swaying. I could feel my principles weakening, falling away in the face of his gorgeousness. Maybe it was the fact that I'd turned thirty and life's unpredictability was weighing on me. Maybe it was the horrible dinner with Mike and Fairy Girl the night before. Or maybe it was the fact that I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and all my great principles wouldn't be of the slightest use then, would they?