Hardly Working (16 page)

“Me?”

“Your childhood.” I laughed. “And don't try and worm out of it.”

He looked past me at the far wall and said, “There were those lonely summers in great rambling Cape Cod houses,
the sailing and the fishing, unbearably cold and lonely Boston winters.”

“So you're a lonely American?”

“No, a lonely Canadian. My mother…my family moved to the States when I was young. That was where I met Chaz.”

“So then it was just you and good old Chaz Heffelfeffel, eh?”

“Vanpfeffer. We were friends. We grew up together and went to the same university.”

“That would be Harvard again?”

“It would be…again…”

I was looking up at the ceiling. There was a long silence. When I turned to look at him, his eyes were closed. “Ian?”

“Uh…Dinah…you'll have to forgive me…but I must still be on Eastern time…” He'd barely finished the sentence before he was fast asleep.

Right. What does the accomplished man-eater do when the man she's come with doesn't come with her, so to speak?

She organizes a manicure, a massage in the spa, and maybe something on the DVD player, a good film in peaceful solitude, while she regroups and gathers her strength for the next victim.

I was out of my mind. This was a thousand-dollar-a-night hotel. It was no place to stay in and not have sex.

I got my cell phone out of my purse, snuck into the bathroom and called Joey.

“Home for strays and waifs,” his voice answered. There was laughter in the background.

“Joey, it's me, Dinah. Where are you?”

“Dinah, you're the last person I expected to hear from. Shouldn't you be getting screwed silly right about now?”

“He's fallen asleep.”

“He's what?”

“Fallen asleep.”

“You must have bored him.”

“I was just wondering the same thing myself. What's going on there? Where are you?”

“Over at Jon and Kev's. We're playing killer Scrabble.”

“Big night on the town, eh?”

“Hey. Never underestimate the power of words.”

“I'm bored, Joey,” I whispered.

“You have every right to be. Is his snoring going to keep you awake? Pretend you're suddenly single again and you're treating yourself to this weekend…oh…Jon wants to talk to you.”

Jon's voice said, “Hi there. Where are you? We could have used you here tonight for the Scrabble.”

“My Savior.”

“At your service. Where are you?”

“I'm at Long Beach. Wickaninnish Inn.”

“Long Beach? How did you get there? It's one beautiful place.”

“I guess so.”

“You guess so?”

“It would be more beautiful if the man I came with hadn't just conked out for the night.”

Jon laughed. “Never mind. Go down to the beach and run along it in the dark. It's a great sensation.”

“It's almost pitch-black out there. I can hear the ocean but I can barely see it.”

“That's the whole point. It's amazing.”

“You mean run along the beach chanting ‘The sea is my mother'?”

“Why not?”

“I'd kind of hoped that tonight all that outdoorsy nature stuff would be a distant cousin. It was supposed to be
human
nature tonight.”

“Would that be the new man in your life, your boss?”

“The same.”

“I'd do it with you if I were there, Dinah.”

“Do what?”

“Go running in the dark.”

“I wish you guys were
all
here. It would be so much more fun.”

“Uhh, Joey wants the—”

The phone was grabbed back from Jon and Joey said, “Gotta hang up now. You're wearing down my battery and we're going out clubbing.”

“Wait a minute, Joey, I thought you said it was Scrabble night….” But he'd already hung up.

I sighed. It was one of those moments. You're out on what is supposed to be the date of your life, and the party is somewhere else.

It was too dark to go running.

What a crazy idea.

I had another inspiration.

I dug my laptop out of my bag and started to surf the Net.

Okay, I know. Sad.

It was a last-ditch alternative.

Just in case things got boring.

Okay, I confess.

It was an addiction.

I liked to stay informed.

At least, that was my excuse.

To date, I'd not heard anything from Rupert. Still, my curiosity was piqued. I started to look up Hector Ferrer. Over and over the words
Scarlet Tango
came up. At first, it was hard to tell what the Scarlet Tango was exactly. I continued to surf. Up it came again between names like Chick Corea and Astor Piazzolla. It was appearing in anthologies everywhere, anthologies of tango music. There it was again and again, a piece of music composed by my father. “Scarlet Tango” by Hector Ferrer—8' 42”.

I stared out at the beach again.

Jon's idea was crazy.

But there was no way I could fall asleep in my present condition, so I put away my laptop, got back into my heavier clothes, pulled on the knee-length red down jacket that Cleo had lent me, and headed out toward the booming Pacific.

I ran along the windy cold beach in the dark. It was strange. I kept expecting to bump into or trip over something. But I didn't because the beach was so vast and the tide was out. It was like being on another planet, or just floating free in some distant part of the universe. Or like running in a vacuum except for the waves breaking out in the distance. I enjoyed myself, running and jumping and spinning around until I lost all sense of direction.

Out on the sand, I leapt and howled at the dark sky and beating waves.

Ian Trutch be damned.

Jon was right. It felt good to run out there by myself. In no time I was thinking in tango rhythms. I remembered those weird, exciting, exotic strains I'd already heard and tried to imagine what kind of piece Scarlet Tango could be. I started to dance, improvising my own kind of tango on the beach. I did the
paseo
past the bright crashing breakers, did a grand
caminata
along the sand, and tried a few
giros
into an imaginary man. By the time I was tangoing my way back to the hotel, I was ready for anything.

When I got to the room, Ian was in exactly the same position.

 

I was woken by the sound of a door opening. The light from the hallway flooded the room. Ian was at the door with an enormous bouquet of pale roses. I switched on the bedside light. They were yellow roses and there must have been three dozen of them. How had he managed it at two in the morning? Driven like crazy down to some little mill town with an all-night grocery? Robbed a hothouse?

I got up and went over to him. He held the bouquet out to me. “Forgive me for falling asleep, Dinah.” I took the bouquet and sniffed the roses. They had no scent. I'd never received three dozen yellow odorless roses from anyone. So I forgave him.

Twice.

Saturday

Ian's side of the bed was already empty. Apart from being a fur-buying hedonist, he was also turning out to be a person who never slept when other people were sleeping. It fit the profile of executive vampire quite well, really. But then when he came into the room and smiled, and said he was sorry again, and took me for a delicious breakfast in the restaurant, and under the table, kept my feet squeezed between his feet the whole time, I was able to overlook this defect.

The weather turned gray and cold by morning so the rest of the weekend was spent inside the hotel, Ian letting his body do the apologizing. And eloquently too. And when we weren't doing that, we toyed with crosswords and looked out at the foggy drizzle from various windows, the restaurant window, the lobby window, the bar window, the bedroom window, and the window by the hot tub.

Later, while we were having a hot stone massage in the Cedars Spa, and knobs of heat were radiating through my muscles and making me forget, finally, everything that was wrong with the world, Ian turned onto his side and said, “I've been meaning to ask you, Dinah. Why isn't a girl like you married?”

Ouch.

Searing pain.

Someone, somewhere, had a voodoo doll of me. Whenever that horrible marriage question was asked, my anonymous tormentor gleefully jabbed and pricked away at my poor little effigy. It was like a curse, that question. I glared at
Ian. Every muscle, nerve and fiber in my body had become rigid and inflamed within seconds.

“Why do I take two sugars in my coffee?” I asked, my voice oozing with boredom.

“You like it sweet, I imagine.”

“Ditto for my private life, Ian. I like it sweet.”

So stop asking stupid questions.

Sunday

On the drive back to Vancouver, a cloud of disappointment enveloped me and I couldn't shake it off. I'd hoped a weekend together would have helped me get to know him, but Ian seemed as much of a stranger as ever.

I
an dropped me off at my apartment with a peck on the cheek. I climbed the stairs slowly and when I dropped my bag in front of my door to put the key in the lock, there was an explosion of laughter from Joey's place. I opened my door, put my bag inside, and banged on Joey's door. When he opened it, I came at him like the bad cop. “Okay, what's going on here? You know laughter's forbidden in this building.”

“Just a quiet little stuff-your-face-with-potluck among friends. Come on in.”

I stepped inside.

Joey's place was furnished in early Salvation Army with brilliantly clever touches, such as vivid enamel paint on old wooden furniture. Bright blue chest of drawers with orange and yellow knobs and outlines. Pink-and-turquoise kitchen table and fuchsia and peppermint-green chairs. The art on the walls was classic movie posters. His living-dining room had terra-cotta walls, his kitchen was painted lemon-yellow
and his bedroom a rich dark indigo with metallic silver stars on the ceiling. In the bedroom, he had hung large photographs, tributes to the glories of the male body. It was a bit like living inside a comic book.

Joey had invited everybody. Cleo, Fran, Simon, Kevin and Jon, Jake, Ash and Lisa. We'd all gotten on so well at the block party that Joey had decided to repeat the experience. Only Ida hadn't come. She had a busy social life elsewhere.

The voices in the room had risen to deaf-making. Everyone was talking at once about everything, and everyone seemed to be having a much better time than I'd had all weekend.

“Dinah,” exclaimed Kevin, coming over and giving me a big hug. “You're back from the wilds. Tell us all about it.”

“Not much to tell. It's a beautiful hotel.”

“Were the clothes okay?” Cleo called across the din.

“They were perfect,” I called back.

Simon asked, “Spot any whales?”

“No.”

I wandered over to Jon's side of the room and sat down at the table next to him. A big sigh escaped from me.

“Did you do what I suggested up there at Long Beach?”

“Running in the dark?”

He nodded.

“That first night? I ended up tangoing on the beach. In the total darkness. By myself. It was the highlight of my weekend, I might add.”

He shook his head, chuckled, then looked up. His eyes caught the light. He glanced over at Kevin, as if checking on him, then said to me, “Romantic weekend not too successful, eh?”

“He actually had the nerve to ask me why a girl like me wasn't married?”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So why aren't you?” He raised one eyebrow.

“No,” I moaned. “Not you, too.” I gave him a small shove.

“What did I do?”

“That question. It's taboo.”

“It is?”

“It's like saying how come you're such a failure? How come you can't get a man and keep him?”

“Okay,” he said, laughing. “So how come you're such a failure, Dinah?”

“I'm a free woman. That's what's wrong with me. Nobody makes me compromise. I like that. And I think I'm going to stay free as long as I can manage it. I don't see the glamor in that marriage stuff.”

I was such a brazen liar it was all I could do not to choke on my own words. But I wanted to believe them. I really did.

“I'll buy that. Totally agree with you,” he said.

“So how do people do it? I'd really like to know. How do people keep it alive?”

“Booze,” said Jon, raising his glass with a smile.

“Right. That's about the same as the lobotomy effect. So how do they do it? Really.”

“Uh…I, er…don't really know. I've never analyzed the successful couple.” He raised his voice so that Kevin could hear. “A lot of couples fall in together by accident, because they are in a certain place at a certain time, and then they decide to keep on stumbling along together by accident.” Kevin was watching us both and listening and when he caught my eye, he blew us both exaggerated kisses.

I blew one back.

“Now tell me about the tango.” Jon smiled.

“It's a long story. But the short version is that I'm taking tango lessons.”

“It must be fun.”

“I'm not sure about that.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

“Because my therapist thought it would help me learn to follow a man.”

“He sees it as a problem? Not following a man?”

“My therapist seems to think so,” I said glumly.

“Well, hell. Why?”

“Because of the way I broke up with my fiancé.”

“How was that? Was it spectacular?”

“Not at all. I just realized that he was an academic climber, packed my stuff and came over here to Vancouver, without a word to him or anybody else. I didn't even give him a chance to defend himself or talk me out of leaving. My therapist thought I should have talked about it. But some things just can't be talked about because talking only makes it worse.”

“It's a shame.”

“What is?”

“That you didn't throw a big scene. I can just picture you doing it. I'll bet you can make sparks fly.”

“I wish I had. But it wouldn't have helped. I had all my big scenes later, in private, by myself.”

“So what was the situation with your ex then?”

“Maybe I'll tell you about it when I'm really, really drunk.”

“Tell me now,” he prompted.

“Well, you are my Savior,” I said, “and I wouldn't even be around to tell it if you hadn't happened along when you did. So I do owe you.”

“Yes, you do.” He smiled.

“Well, it's just that Mike…”

“Your ex…”

“After we got together…got really interested in my past.”

“Yes?”

“I thought it was a lover's thing, you know, wanting to know every single stupid little thing about the other person. So it was, show me where you cut your knee, show me where you rode horses, show me where you slept when you were a girl…”

“Hmmmm,” said Jon, his eyes exceptionally bright.

“He was using me to get to my mother. We were always over there. Used to drive up from the university and spend the weekends… I should tell you, Jon, my mother is a very generous woman. She always helps students out.”

“Ah.”

“So when Mike started sucking up to her big-time, I got the sensation that he'd do anything, I mean anything at all to get in her good books. Because she's the big name marine mammal scientist and I'm just her daughter and that's his area of study.”

“I'm getting the picture,” said Jon. “So he was using you for eventual career reasons?”

I nodded. “She
has
been helping him all along. But then he really pushed it. He started giving her little gifts, tokens. My mother's very gracious about that kind of thing. A lot of people give her gifts. But
I
wasn't getting any gifts. It was absurd. I just felt so jealous. So left out. He'd bypassed me. So I left.”

“Gotcha,” said Jon. He massaged my shoulder and said, “Shall we get ourselves some of this great food?”

I nodded.

We stood up and went over to the table where it was all spread out.

Jon became like a mother hen. He got me a plate and began heaping things on and saying, “You have to try this and this and this. Kevin made them.”

He seemed so proud of Kevin when he said it that I had another pang of envy.

“It's too much. I can't eat all of this,” I blurted. “I have to consider my thighs.”

“Real thighs are in this year,” said Jon, through a mouthful. “Not those airbrushed and cyber-manipulated gams.”

Later, after the dinner, and a taste of several of the liqueurs, I grabbed Joey and dragged him across the room in
a messy
caminata
and then tried a few
giros.
Jake called across the room, teasing, “Hey, Dinah. We have programs for that kind of problem. Here's our one eight hundred number.”

After that we divided into two teams and played charades. Lisa didn't want to play by the rules. None of that two words, first syllable, sign language stuff. She wanted to be a drama queen and act it all out.

Then Joey piped up, “Hey Di, show us again what you learned in tango class.”

“I need a victim,” I said.

Jon stood up. “Take me.”

Liquid courage was surging through me, so I said, “Well now, the first thing you have to do…is…uh…plaster your body up against your partner's.” Jon plastered himself against me. I looked right into his yellow eyes and suddenly felt as though I were looking into the cougar's eyes. I looked down at our feet. “And then just try to walk with me.” And for a seamless few seconds we glided, glided across the room, bumped into the wall, stumbled over each other, fell on the floor and hooted.

That was when Kevin began to look unwell.

Jon stood up, dusted himself off, and said, “I think Kev and I had better be going.”

Monday

Lisa grabbed me by the hand and pulled me into my office, then shut the door.

“I just did it, just now,” she said, rolling her eyes and grimacing.

“What did you do?”

“I said I'd go out with him.”

“With who, Lisa? I'm not following you.”

“I said I'd go out with Roly, the yellow slicker guy.”

I opened my eyes wide. “Well…uh…Lisa, you never
know. Maybe it'll be a fun date. You can't always judge a book by its cover.”

Although in my humble opinion, the cover is always a good place to start.

Two fret lines appeared between Lisa's eyebrows. “Oh, gosh, I sure hope so. I sure hope I'm not making a huge mistake.”

“Where are you going for lunch?”

“That Greek place on Broadway. His choice.”

Greek?

A bit suspicious.

Now I had reason to worry about Lisa and her lost causes again. At GWI, Lisa's lost causes were our lost causes. There are those who try to save the world in a sweeping impersonal way and those, like Lisa, who were trying to do it with their own two hands.

I said, “You think he can be redeemed then? What's the story on him anyway?”

She grimaced. “He likes big blond women.”

“Apart from that.”

“He's very well-spoken. Have you ever talked to him? He's completely, totally a gentleman. If you close your eyes while he's talking, you imagine somebody who looks completely, totally different from him. And he doesn't smell like a street person. I think he actually washes. With soap.”

“Well, that's definitely something.”

“So I figure I can just about handle a lunch. That's forty minutes' worth, right? That won't kill me.”

“How are you getting there?” I asked.

“Taxi?”

“Who's paying?”

“He said he'd take care of it all.”

“You're a good woman, Lisa.”

“That's what Roly always says.”

Lisa left and I called Moira in Ottawa. “Extension twenty-two, please.”

Moira's voice answered. “Dinah. I was hoping you'd get back to me. I never got to finish telling you about the union woman here. He pressured her, Dinah.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean if he hadn't pressured her so much, she wouldn't have had a heart attack…damn…I can't talk. He must have his goons monitoring everything. Call me again tomorrow.”

Almost as soon as I'd put down the receiver, the phone rang. It was Rupert. He was calling from God knows where. The line crackled with static and all I heard was, “Got…messages…I promise I'll…” before the connection ended abruptly.

A “bling” told me I had new mail. I clicked on the icon.

 

From: Ian Trutch

To: Staff Members

Re: Vacation time: All vacations up to and including the month of December are cancelled in light of Space Centre fund-raiser event. New vacation time will be examined and allotted following results of Space Centre event.

Re: office stationery: Contract with recycled paper suppliers cancelled due to excessive cost. Find “normal” paper donors. Re: employee donations: included file attachment A is the new employee donation module with suggested donation based on wages earned, and bank agreement form to have the sum taken off at source, a highly recommended time-saving action.

Re: Coffee: From today forward, only Kona coffee will be used in the machine in the coffee room. Everyone will be expected to contribute to the cost.

Re: PA: I am now accepting resumés for personal assistant.

 

I opened up the attachment for employee donations. It was one wild, official-looking document. I didn't bother
with the fine print but I was sure it included something about first-born children.

I suddenly felt very uncharitable.

 

Jake poked his head around my office door. He looked nervous. “Dinah, your mother's here.” He was already fiddling with the end of his mustache. A bad sign.

“Really? She told me she didn't have a lecture until next week.”

“Trutch invited her.”

“Really?” Everyone wanted my mother. “What for?”

“He'd like her to host a documentary on Green World and its pilot projects. His plan is to use the media to give GWI a higher, more commercial profile. He wants it to be this big PR thing.”

“PR is
my
area. Why hasn't he spoken to me?”

“Well, frankly Dinah, he's been asking a lot of questions about you.”

“He's calling my performance into question?”

“Not in so many words…”

And then my intuition made me say, “Jake, I have a confession to make.”

“A confession?” He looked puzzled.

“Sit down.”

He sat.

“You know that Tod Villiers, has left town?”

“Now that you mention it, I did hear some rumors. I didn't take them seriously.”