Hardly Working (17 page)

“He told me to tear up the check.”

“The check? Which check?”

“The one for Mudpuddle,” I said, gathering all my courage. “Tod Villiers is bankrupt.”

Jake slapped his forehead with his hand. “Christ, Dinah. How long have you known?”

“A few days.”

“Why didn't you tell me as soon as you knew?”

“I was buying time. He told me that he had a replacement donor. That he'd spoken to the guy and that he was definitely coming on board.”

“Who is it? What's his name?”

“Hamish Robertson.”

Jake stared at me blankly for a second or two, then muttered, “Christ. Damn. Goddamn. Jesus, Dinah. I gotta get a chocolate bar.”

I got up and followed him into his office where he was yanking open the bottom drawer and ripping the wrapper off a Jersey Milk. It disappeared into his mouth.

“Jake, if I can just get to Hamish Robertson, I'm sure we'll get our donation.”

Jake shook his head. “Dinah, Dinah, Dinah.
Nobody's
been able to get to Hamish Robertson. Not for the last ten years. He's a recluse. The invisible man. You should have told me right away. We're up to our knees in it now.”

 

When I got back to my office my mother was there, reorganizing Mr. Potato Head's body parts. “Isn't he lovely?” she said. “You're looking awfully glum, Di Di. Come along. We'll get a bite of lunch down the road.”

In the restaurant, my stomach shut down completely. While my mother tackled her triple deluxe burger with fries and onion rings, I poked at my Caesar salad. I was dying to interrogate my mother on Hector Ferrer, but having been warned, I stayed off the topic.

“Well, lovey, it seems that this new boyfriend, this Trutch man of yours has rather extravagant plans for your organization.”

“Mine? Did he say he was mine?”

“Well, he did mention you were ‘seeing each other.'” She chuckled. “Quaint.”

My stony look was eloquent.

My mother held up her hands. “You know I would never interfere in your private life. You're a grown person. I'm sure that when you made your choices you had your extremely good reasons, Di Di.”

It was not quite what I wanted to hear. “Are you going to do it, Mom?”

“What, pumpkin?”

“The documentary.”

She wiped her mouth neatly with the napkin. “Do you want me to do it, lovey?”

How could I tell her, “No. Once, just once in my life, let me do it on my own. Let me prove to myself that I can. That I don't need your help.” A documentary hosted by my mother would be grand for the greater good of Green World but not the greater good of Dinah Nichols.

She looked at her watch and said, “Heavens. He's awfully late, isn't he?”

“Who, Mom?”

“Your Trutch man, dear. I invited him to join us to talk over the details.”

The words “Don't do it, Mom,” rushed out of me.

“Heavens, Dinah.”

“Don't do it. Don't take this the wrong way but I don't want you to help Green World out.”

She paused, fiddled with her gold earring, scrutinized me then smiled. “I thoroughly understand, pumpkin. I really do. This is your life and your job and you don't want me interfering in it. You need to test your capabilities.”

Why did she have to be so damned understanding? “It's not that I don't think you'd be the best person to help us out…it's just that…you're my mother…and it's not always so easy…”

She laughed. “I know, I know. Dear, dear. I sense that this might upset your Trutch man. He did seem awfully adamant. What shall I tell him?”

“Anything you like. But not that I told you not to do it.
It might get me fired. That's what he's here for, Mom, to fire people.”

“Lord. That does seem a trifle drastic. But just remember, Dinah. There are an infinite number of wonderful jobs out there for you. There's nothing you can't do if you set your mind to it. And if worse came to worst you could always give me a hand… Ah…here he is now. I think we won't commit to anything right at the moment. That strikes me as saner. I'll let him down gently when the right moment comes.”

I laughed out loud. I don't think my mother had ever let a man down gently in her life. With her it was usually a fast clean cut. Snip, snip, snip.

Ian sat down at our table. It was the first time I'd seen them together. He'd bypassed me to meet her, but he also seemed wary of her, vaguely threatened.

My mother immediately broke the ice by saying, “Ian, I was just saying to Dinah, do you think your Trutch man would fancy a bit of sailing? Or is he the safe dry land type?”

I'd seen my mother throw down the gauntlet before, but never so blatantly.

“Ah…sailing? Yes. I've done a bit of crewing.”

“Well, I know it's a working day for all of you, but town does give me such claustrophobia. What about this afternoon? I have a little time and the weather isn't too bad.” It was a blustery day, with a mix of sun and cloud, a bit choppy, but nothing my mother wasn't used to.

“And we can talk about the documentary?” he said.

My mother's mouth was conveniently full as she nodded.

“What sort of craft is it?” he asked.

“A jolly sturdy reliable one,” she answered, her eyes twinkling wickedly.

“I should change my clothes…” he said.

“Righto.” She looked at her watch. “Will forty minutes be enough? What do you say, Di? We've got the extra kit if he needs it.”

“Oh yes.” I was enjoying this a little more than I ought to.

She gave him the details, the berth number and how to get there and we agreed to meet at the boat.

 

I raced back to the office to let them all know I would be out for the afternoon but when I arrived, everyone was up in the coffee room. Ash was at their center.

She was wearing a sea-green sari and her thick glasses. She looked like the Hindu deity, Shiva. A near-sighted Shiva. In Destruction Mode.

She stabbed the air as she spoke. “I do not drink coffee. I drink tea. I am not paying for Ian Trutch's fancy Hawaiian coffee. If he gets fancy coffee, I want fancy tea. I want Darjeeling. I want Ceylon. That man is not going to get an extra penny out of me. I know what kind of expense account he's given himself. The receipts go through
my
hands. It's GWI who services that car of his and pays for half his meals. Who does he think he is anyway?”

Ash was making progress. She was complaining to real live people for a change.

 

When Ian came striding along the dock, dressed in a navy blue yachting jacket over a cream fisherman knit sweater, white pants, and a captain's cap, my jaw sagged open. He was carrying a bottle. When he spotted me, he held it up. “Champagne. A nice boating vintage.”

It all made me wonder what boat he'd crewed on. The
HMS DILETTANTE
?

When he came closer to my mother's boat his pace slowed. I struggled to keep a smile off my face.

“This is it?” he asked.

My mother's boat is an old twenty-eight-foot Bristol Channel Cutter, a floating laboratory, cluttered with equipment for tracking whales, dolphins and seals. Completely utilitarian.

My mother came up from below deck. “Welcome aboard,
Ian. Let me just make a space for you. Mind the wet spots. Oh, no, don't sit there, my student was taking apart the engine, a bit of grease there, I'm afraid. Wouldn't want to mark those lovely trousers. Just shove those ropes to one side. Yes, they are a little manky I'm afraid. Little fuel spill. Champagne? Di, take this bottle below and find a glass, would you, lovey? I won't have any myself just now but perhaps you'll pour some out for Ian.”

My mother had always maintained a strict “No drinking aboard” rule, for the safety of her students.

Ian was squeezing himself into a tiny corner of the little available seating room and smearing suntan lotion on his face. My mother started up the motor. I went below deck with the bottle and hunted for a decent glass. There were some scratched plastic beach glasses, but they looked reasonably clean. I popped the cork and sloshed some in, then took it up to Ian. He took the glass and struck a fair-weather pose while around us the weather was quickly growing worse. We motored out along False Creek towards English Bay over water that was now turning from blue to gray. Small whitecaps were appearing and the boat began to lurch through the swells, rising then slapping down against the water.

When my mother and I were aboard there was no need to speak; we could read each other's minds. She turned off the motor, I raised the mainsail, she took the rudder and we were suddenly shooting through the water in a wind that was growing quickly fiercer. The boat was already keeling at a forty-five-degree angle. I yelled to Ian, “Get to starboard. We need your weight over there.”

He looked bewildered.

“Over there. Your right-hand side.”

He crawled and grappled his way over to the other side. His glass skittered along the deck and over the edge. I watched as his tan took on a greenish tinge. We were well
out into the bay by now. The few sailboats that had been there earlier were heading for shore.

All of a sudden, a crosswind made the whole boat shudder. My mother let the sheets go slack and the sail flutter every which way. The boat had turned into a bucking bronco.

Ian was now on his feet, slipping and sliding. “Dinah, is there a bathroom on this thing?”

I pointed toward the hatch. He skidded backward, turned and caught himself against the edge of the boat, and retched violently over the side.

My mother was cheerful. “Di Di, we have to get the spinnaker up. Do lash the poor man to the mast before he goes overboard or something equally dreary.”

I told Ian to go below and he gratefully clung to the fittings as he made his way to the hatch. My mother and I raised the spinnaker.

As soon as it was hoisted, the boat lifted up and glided above the chop. We turned about and headed back into the harbor, and when the boat was finally tied up in its berth, Ian climbed off and stood on the dock, trying to compose himself. “It's not like the Atlantic at all. I can handle the Atlantic.”

Sure you can, Ian. Sure you can.

Tuesday

Word of Ian's little seafaring adventure had spread throughout the office. Lisa came into my office and began to sing under her breath, “I'm Popeye the sailor man, poop poop…I live in a garbage can, poop poop…”

There was a knock at my office door. Ian put his head in. “Am I interrupting?”

“Just leaving,” said Lisa.

They exchanged places, Lisa going out with a little wave, and Ian coming in with a dark look in his eye.

He said, “Dinah, I have to step out for a bit. When the workmen come, would you deal with them for me?”

“Workmen? What workmen?”

“For the third floor. My new office.”

“Your…office? Uh…”

“Come with me and I'll show you what you have to do.”

I couldn't wait. I followed him out into the building's common hallway, and up another set of stairs, chattering all the way. When we reached the next floor, I realized that Caloo, the import-export offices that had occupied the other half of that floor, had vanished. “But where have they gone? They were doing a booming business last week….”

“Not anymore.”

I followed Ian through the corridor, poking my nose into the tiny rabbit-warren rooms, all abandoned, the only things left behind being dust balls, scattered papers and in the big main office, a couch with a slightly moth-eaten green velveteen cover.

He adjusted his tie in the window-glass reflection. “They have instructions to knock down anything that isn't a supporting wall, more or less. You're to see that they don't stand around smoking and wasting my time.”

His time? I doubted he was paying for this office out of his own pocket. It would most likely be the
company's
time. I said to him, “This whole half of the third floor is going to be
your
office?”

“GWI has an image problem and I intend to do something to fix it. See you tonight? For dinner?”

I shook my head. “Don't you want some time off?”

“I prefer dining with a pretty woman to dining alone.”

Aha. I was getting the picture. I was a blow-up doll that sat with him at the dinner table and filled the empty space on the other side of the bed.

But he kissed both my hands so I said okay, I'd go to dinner on the condition that we should go to that really chic
place that did nouvelle cuisine for the movie stars, gave you one carrot shred, one lettuce leaf, one endive, one asparagus tip, a sliver of duck breast and a sprinkling of truffle, then charged you enough to pay some kid's university tuition for a whole year. All this “dating” was making me put on weight.

He rushed away. I waited for a minute then went down to the second floor and knocked on Ash's door. She'd sent me an e-mail earlier telling me to come to her office. When I opened the door, she said unhappily, “Oh, it's you, Dinah.” She searched through a pile of receipts. “Who went to the Urban Waste Congress in Seattle?”

“That was Cleo.”

“And who went to the conference at Wickaninnish?”

“Uh…the…uh…conference…at…uh…Wickaninnish?”

“Long Beach. I have the receipts here but I can't find the names.”

“Uh…I was there…and, uh…so was Ian Trutch…” I suppose we were
conferring,
in the broadest sense of the word.

“Okay. I've now been instructed by Ian Trutch to tell you all that the per diem for out-of-town conferences is now twenty dollars a day. Whoever goes over budget will have to take it out of their own pocket. That goes for all of you. And there's something else. We can only pay for a portion of the accommodations for the international visitors coming to the Space Centre for the fund-raising event.”