Hardly Working (15 page)

Thursday

I
an came into my office. He looked pensive, worried, and a little remorseful. Still gorgeous of course, but anxious and slightly charged, as menacing as a greenish-gray sky before a storm. He stayed near the door, keeping his distance, now very composed and professional. No rushing over to touch me, kiss me, or generally find out how I was.

No siree.

I was instantly terrified.

This is it, I thought, it's all over, after less than a week. The moment has arrived. He's going to tell me he's found a fabulously thin, tall, beautiful model to go out with. Somebody with no thigh issues.

“Dinah.”

“Ian.”

“What are you doing this weekend?”

What was I doing this weekend?

Was he out of his mind?

I was going to spend my weekend hovering around both my telephones, the regular and the cell, waiting for
him
to call me, the blockhead. Along with trying on every single outfit and set of seductive underwear I owned, and then when the definitely hostile and silent telephones still hadn't rung by Sunday night, I'd shed some tears. Not quite enough tears to fill Lake Michigan but enough to bring Joey running over to my place with the First Aid Kit (Moskovskaya vodka and the most lurid orange cheesies he could find—you'd be amazed at the healing powers of hydrogenated palm oil and artificial coloring). And then after the infusion of delicious toxins, we'd both go out clubbing.

Ian still hadn't considered smiling as an option that morning so I smiled first.

I tested the waters. “What am I doing? I thought I'd throw a party.”

Accomplished man-eaters of the world, never let on that you are having anything but heaps of riotous fun. Capital
F.

“Oh.” He seemed disappointed.

I leapt in. “But I haven't actually made up my mind. I mean, I haven't invited anybody yet or anything like that…I mean, if you have a suggestion, I'm open to it.”

“Then pack an overnight bag, casual clothes. We're going away for the weekend. We'll leave tomorrow after work.” He raised his eyebrows to wait for my assent.

“Uh…yes, fine, great,” I said.

He nodded, made the faintest attempt at a smile, and left.

I felt breathless.

Over the moon.

Stunned that he was still interested.

At the same time, a little more confident.

And malicious.

That evening just before going home, I waited for the right moment then followed Penelope to the ladies' room. Well, stalked her, really.

There she was in front of the mirror, adjusting her chastity belt and practicing her facial expressions for all those poor unsuspecting men out on the street who'd try to pick her up. You know the ones? Look all you want but touch me and I'll stick your goodies with a cattle prod expressions?

“Penelope, dahling. Just the person I was looking for,” I sang out.

“What do you want, Dinah?”

“Well, I thought that since you're such an expert on my love life, you'd be pleased to hear that my diet of men has improved quite a lot recently. I've had a big man-eating week this week. And he's so good you wouldn't believe it. I started at the top of him and went right on from there, and I can't tell you how yummy he was. Sweet and salty and soft and crunchy and spicy and tart, all kind of mixed up together. Delicious. Just thinking about Ian Trutch makes me so hungry I can hardly stand it. In fact, I think I'm ready for dinner.”

Penelope's expression went from irritation to pure undisguised jealousy. I would swear to this day that the green pulsating aura all around her was so real and solid I could have reached out, broken off a piece and taken it home as a souvenir.

I smiled at Penelope, gave her a big thumbs-up, and left the building.

 

Frantic, I called up Cleo as soon as I got home from work. “I need clothes. Casual clothes. Ian Trutch is taking me away for the weekend.”

“Come on over. We're staying in tonight.”

“You and…?”

“Simon. Who else? See you later.”

Simon. Still parking himself and his stuff at Cleo's. I allowed myself a cynical little smile.

Cleo and I were definitely not the same size. She was two inches taller than me and almost skinny. But Cleo liked her casual clothes too big. What was fashionably baggy on her usually hugged my body perfectly.

Cleo's place was a suite in a big old house near the university. It was decorated in bordello chic, with an abundance of pink drapery, bloodred cushions, multicolored bead curtains, gauzy white mosquito nets, and cream-colored lace everywhere. The place felt like one big bedroom, which was possibly her intention.

She and Simon were looking very relaxed when I arrived. I'd probably come at the wrong moment, but then with Cleo, it was often the wrong moment.

“Hey Di,” said Simon. He was wearing a brand-new enormous smoke-gray velour bathrobe and stretching himself out on the couch like a big lazy housecat. Probably hadn't bothered to get dressed that day either.

“So Simon, when are you heading out for the rock?” I asked.

“What rock?”

“Any rock will do.”

He shrugged and grinned.

It was worse than I thought.

“C'mon in here,” said Cleo, motioning toward the bedroom. She began to pull clothes out of drawers and closets. Designer woolens flew onto the bed along with fisherman knits, tweedy ensembles in autumn colors, capes and ski jackets. We wanted to cover every possibility.

“He hasn't told me where we're going. I hope we're not going skiing,” I said. “I've never skied in my life, Cleo.”

“Don't worry, if he does take you skiing, you just tell him you'll meet him out there on the slopes then hang around
in the lounge drinking Irish coffees… Dinah, calm down. I'm sure everything's going to be fine.”

Friday

The wind had blown all the rain south to Washington and a clear, star-cluttered night sky whizzed by above us as Ian lowered his foot on the accelerator. I couldn't believe I was letting him take my life in his hands like that, but then he'd had quite a lot of me in his hands recently, so I guess it made a perverse kind of sense. And the more I was with him, the more reckless I felt.

Until I was able to make out the bald mountainside dimly looming before us, and along the roadside, a row of newly-planted trees.

“Look at that? Did you see that? Did you see what they're going to do there?” I blurted out, pointing out the stand of Douglas firs and Sitka spruces that was vanishing quickly into the distance. “That is a perfect example of their cunning.”

“What are you talking about, Dinah?” Ian drove even faster.

“The beauty strip,” I grumbled.

“What's a beauty strip?”

“You're joking, I hope.”

“A bunch of beautiful women doing a striptease?” he offered.

I shook my head, despairingly. “You're the CEO of the western branch of Green World International and you don't know what a beauty strip is.”

“Something women use for depilation?”

I groaned.

“For removing their body hair. Like a wax strip. Am I close?”

I groaned louder.

He tried again. “It's a whole row of hairdressers' places in a strip mall.”

“You're warmer but you flunk anyway. Go directly to the doghouse and do not collect your dog biscuits.”

“So what's the beauty strip?”

“It's those few hundred feet of trees that the logging companies plant or leave along the side of the road so that the public won't see all the clear-cut logging, bald landscape and general devastation behind it. They figure what we don't see, we don't care about. And you know what?”

“What?”

“They're right.”

‘Dinah, it's dark. How do you know it's a devastated mountainside?”

“Do you want to go back? I'd put money on it.”

“How much?” He looked sharper all of a sudden.

“You're joking.”

“No.”

“A hundred?” It was all I had in my purse.

“You're on,” he said.

The tires squealed as he did a perilous U-turn and gunned the car back to the mountain. He slammed on the brakes with another squeal then said, “You have to do this with these cars. You have to use them to their full potential.”

Sure. Just like your women.

I made him get out of the car and we wound and crunched our way in the dark through the narrow strip of new growth and out to the open area where the mountain was showing off its full baldness. The silvering wood of the slashed trunks made it possible to see the extent of the clear-cut.

“The whole mountain,” I said, trying not to choke. “Look at this. It's criminal. Now do you get the picture? This is what the beauty strip is supposed to hide.”

He pulled out his wallet, and offered the money.

“I wasn't serious,” I said. “It's only a bet for the idea of a bet, not for actual money.”

He quickly put the bills away and said, “I told you I needed you, Dinah, and this is just another example.”

I didn't care if Ian needed me. I wanted to phone Thomas, rant and rave about forestry. It was a minor glitch in eco-crisis terms, but the shaved mountain had just dampened my mood. I struggled to come up with something else to distract me. Something that had nothing to do with ecology. Something that would make me laugh.

All that came to mind were Hector and the tango.

 

We pulled into our destination, Wickaninnish Inn. Even from the road, I could hear the roar of the surf from the beach.

Ian took a brochure from the glove compartment and read, “Chesterman's Beach, part of the Pacific Rim National Park.”

I said, “Nothing between us and Japan but thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean.”

He looked out into the darkness and said, “Let's go in.”

We pulled out our overnight bags and walked into the lobby.

The hotel sat on a small point of rugged trees and rock jutting into the vast sweeping coastline. The building was a rustic designer orgy of wood, glass, furnishings in natural tones, beiges, browns, creams, and every shade of off-white imaginable.

“If my mother knew I was here she would tell me I was being wasteful.”

“We won't tell your mother then,” said Ian as he checked in and was handed the key card. A porter showed us through the comfortable corridors to our room, which was another smaller orgy of these soft warm noncolors.

“Rugged place,” said Ian, “but they say this has one of the fifty best restaurants in the world. La Pointe restaurant. A great eating experience, so they say.”

Rugged?

I tried not to giggle but it bubbled out of me anyway. “You think this is rugged?”

Ian nodded. “What's so funny?”

“You should have grown up with me. Then you would have seen rugged.”

“Oh, really.” He looked completely uninterested so I didn't launch into my tales from childhood, all about my mother's every-man-for-himself jaunts up the coast, digging our own latrines, fishing for supper, gathering berries for dessert and chasing off the wasps (which my mother always said were there to remind you that the West coast was not actually paradise).

As we unpacked, I couldn't stop myself from tripping and stumbling down my untamed memory lane. I'd spent most of my childhood grappling with solitude, my mother expecting me to simply grow up and if I couldn't do that, be a miniature adult. It had been easy to run wild with the family animals. And then when I was nine, Simon had come along. I think I was in love with him from the first day, by virtue of the fact that he was my only human playmate. Simon was always plotting. I loved to be part of his schemes, which could only be described as harebrained.

So, we'd been children together, comparing our mosquito bites, clambering up trees, building forts over anthills, jumping naked into the ocean, taking the ponies on day-long rides through the trails and then, suffering through homeschooling lessons during the long rainy winters.

Ian's voice broke in, “Dinah. A penny for your thoughts.”

“Sorry?”

“You were far away. Where were you?”

“Back in my childhood.”

He frowned.

“But I'd rather be here with you. Really.” I put my arms around his neck.

He finally gave me a proper smile, the one that requires sunglasses with high UV protection. “You're sure about that now?”

“Absolutely.”

“Then let's climb into that thing.” Ian motioned toward the huge bathroom and the hot tub. It was located by a big picture window that looked out over the dark ocean swells.

“Phew, this is really roughing it,” I said.

Ian pretended not to hear me. “And after we've had our bath, we should eat something.”

“It's pretty late. The kitchen will be closed, won't it?” I pulled on the big plush complimentary bathrobe and went to turn on the taps to fill the hot tub.

“I hope you're hungry,” he called. “I arranged for something to nibble on.”

I nodded. I was beyond hungry.

We lowered ourselves into the tub. The sensation of pounding water was too pleasant to disturb with any movements other than breathing. We sat back, allowing the rush of water to pummel all our city tensions away. When we climbed out, we both felt blissful, our muscles like liquid.

When the food came, Ian picked at it methodically, while I had to fight myself not to shovel it in.

When we'd licked the last crumbs from our fingertips, Ian said to me, “Let's stretch out on the bed and you can tell me all about your rugged childhood.”

So I told him, all about my great-grandparents and my mother and the homeschooling, the escape to Vancouver. Everything except Thomas and Hector and Mike.

And then I asked, “What about you?”