Some Great Thing (15 page)

W
E MOVE ON
. W
E
all move on. Simon moved on. He had never really stopped. Run, run, run, run, run. He chased his travel agent for a while. His accountant. And the unions in his mind …

One sweaty session over the sink brought the image of Eleanor Thomas to mind, and that led to a deplorable interlude. Simon timed his trips in the elevator to coincide with Eleanor’s, and first with a series of looks, then with this series of words—“I love you, Eleanor”—he coerced her into a bony kiss.

Shock, bites, unspeakable confusion accompanied many of their subsequent meetings. Later she put his hand on her breast, no larger than a Brussels sprout.

It was the beginning of real complication in the workplace. Simon’s affair with Eleanor was due simply to his curiosity about death—that is the only way to make sense of it. Certainly, he could learn from her. She was fascinating—as profoundly attractive as repellent people can be, as long as they are slim and clean. It was, as I said, just an interlude, some trips in the elevator, but the complications became obvious during a plenary meeting, when the C9 had been submitted. Leonard liked to call an Assistant Deputy Minister from Land and Environment to meetings whenever an important public decision was to be made.

Eleanor, Leonard, Simon, and Renée were present, along with a few others. Simon scarcely opened his mouth to say the following, “You will notice …” before Eleanor said, “I don’t understand you,” her voice shivering like an autumn leaf, and Leonard barked, “There are flaws in this report!” while Renée murmured that Simon had written most of it.

The voices all arose at once, and then Simon began again.

“You will notice that …”

“Profound flaws!”

“It is not how we agreed to put it.”

“I don’t understand what you want.”

Leonard, as Chairman, put it to the ADM that the issue should be reviewed in six months and that some of the crucial studies outlined in the memo would be repeated. Leonard left the meeting with a triumphant smirk, as did Eleanor, it seemed, until she came closer and revealed to Simon a sideways dagger of a mouth. Totally inscrutable, frightening, sexy.

H
E BECAME PREOCCUPIED
. H
E
stole more kisses in the elevator, stealing less and losing more. Simon’s stranger soul was drifting toward her world.

They were seen sitting together in the cafeteria where Eleanor normally sat on her own, frowning at a book. She now had a surprising look of dominance. Her kisses in the office became more frank, overwhelming, an orator’s tongue in deed not word. In word she was chastening and correct, which somehow pulled him closer.

“Do not
move
one millimeter closer, Mr. Struthers,
not
in front of my colleagues.”

She gave him the key to the cabinet in her office where there was barely enough room to hang her winter coat. He squeezed in there and waited like Casanova at the foot of Madame X’s stairs—but with no promise of a meal or satisfaction.
Love makes waiting precious to the lover who is sure that Love will keep his word
. He pressed his face into her coat and waited, inhaling the smell of teeth that distinguished her body and clothes.

When she arrived she would kiss him, say nothing, occasionally put his hand on her breast. And she would send him out, desperate.

B
UT THAT TOO ENDED
quickly, as abruptly as it started.

“I wish to have nothing to do with you,” she said one evening in her office.

“Nothing?”

“Not one thing.”

“Not even professionally?”

“Mr. Struthers, to me you are a cipher. A mystery once, and now a perfect zero.”

She was so offensive as to be arousing.

“But you scarcely know me.”

“I believe there is nothing to know.”

“Nothing?”

“At first I thought you were interesting, but you are quite vain, a bit of a phony and rather vapid. You look well enough, as far as that goes. But I am looking for someone either considerably stronger or considerably weaker than I am.
If
I am looking for anyone at all. I do quite well on my own.”

Simon did not do well on his own. All that restraint over the fantasy of Eleanor had to find relief in Eleanor proper.

“Can’t we embrace, Eleanor?”

“What a dainty expression. You might have
embraced
me weeks ago.
Taken
me. Have you no strength?”

“None.”

“Are you powerless?”

“Yes.”

“Completely?”

“Yes.”

“I want the key to my cabinet back.”

“It is in my pocket.”

“Can you not get it?”

“No.”

“Are you powerless?”

“Completely.”

“Which pocket?”

“This one.”

“This one?”

“Deeper.”

“Here?”

“Please.”

“I have it.”

“Please.”

“I have it.”

“Please.”

“There.”

“God.”

It only took a few strokes.

T
HE LAND BECAME KNOWN
as the Greenbelt, but I mustn’t get ahead of things.

The decision to review the issues was followed months later by a few eager applications for development on separate parts of the Belt. The names of the several applicants were Campo Partners, Davies Construction, Atlantic Commercial Builders and McGuinty Construction, all of whose applications can be found in the archives of the National Capital Division [files (1973) C41, D10, AC11, Mc4].

Given the urgency of some of the applications and the inchoate policies on the ultimate purpose of the entire Belt, the National Capital Division was thrown into an exhausting phase of labor. The applications were mostly for domestic development, with one proposing a large shopping mall to serve the proposed local needs. The mall relied on the houses, the houses on the mall. If Simon had looked into the matter he might have found that all of the applicants had something to do with each other, but Simon had no interest in such things. He was preoccupied with navigating the strait between Eleanor and Renée.

Besides, developers are the grown-up versions of the towny boys who bloodied Simon’s nose whenever he left the bounds of school to search for tangy lollies. Their fists created his sense of furtiveness and shame. It would be foolish to get too close to them. Leonard, however, knew the developers well. That was his little secret.

E
LEANOR, SIMON, AND RENÉE
did not work well together.

Renée wished to favor the applicants from the beginning, which suggested to Simon that she was allied with Leonard. Eleanor had such a pedantic approach to any problem that she couldn’t help but be allied with Simon. But she opposed him despite herself.

Leonard wanted their disagreement to lead to further hatred, so that he could step in and do as he pleased. Simon wanted delay.

If only he could spend
more
time with them, and if only spending time meant becoming more mysterious to each other. If only conversations, polite laughs, tedious mundanities would diminish rather than increase over time. Simon didn’t want to be himself, he wanted to get back. He did not want to be the chap with sperm-stained trousers who had stood in Eleanor’s office. He did not want to be the growing bore not quite so interesting as Renée’s career (there were hints that she felt this way only seconds before he abandoned her).

He was the Enigma who subjected Renée to ecstatic humiliations. He was the sublime Undefinable who conquered, for an eye-blink, the categorical precision of Eleanor. He wanted delay, to sit in the room with them and make them wonder.

“This McGuinty proposal,” said Renée, finger on the
M
, “looks fine to me.”

“It is full of errors,” said Eleanor. “Here he says phase one will take ‘eighteen months,’ and here he says ‘eightee moths.’ ”

“The ‘n’ didn’t work,” said Simon.

“Pardon?”

“The ‘n’ on his typewriter may not have worked.”

“That is hardly professional,” said Eleanor.

“It is hardly important,” said Renée.

“It might give us pause,” said Simon.

“Not for a moment,” said Renée.

“It may be of interest,” said Simon.

“It is of no interest,” said Eleanor. “It is unacceptable. Anyway, Mr. Struthers, you make no sense. He could not type ‘eighteen months’ in the first instance if the ‘n’ did not work.”

“It was faulty.”

“I don’t think we need to say anything about typographical errors. I think this McGuinty proposal looks fine,” said Renée, tap tap on
t
.

“ ‘O e hudred and te houses of first class quality for the smarter family,’ he proposes. I find it laughable,” said Eleanor.

“What we are discussing here, Simon, Eleanor, is, as usual, whether we should be the guardians of this land. I, for one, am sick of this discussion. We
are
the guardians of this land. We own it. And we are the guardians of this land on behalf of the citizens of this capital city. Our mandate is to enhance their experience of the city. To experience the city they have to live in it. To live in it they have to have houses. Mr. McGuinty’s proposal is fine.” Finger (white-tipped) atop
u
.

“That is an admirable syllogism,” said Simon. That finger had been in his mouth.

“The proposal is a shambles,” said Eleanor. “Mr. McGuinty also has a poor grasp of arithmetic. He says, if we approve phase one before winter he can complete ‘seven houses in the first three moths, and eight in the next three moths, a total of fiftee in the first half year.’ Last I knew, the school system was still healthily functioning on the premise that eight plus seven was fifteen, not fifty.”

“It is the ‘n,’ ” said Simon.

“How do you know? He clearly can’t spell. I have no doubt that he is a stranger to numbers.”

“He is a builder, Eleanor.”

“No, Renée, he is more than a builder, he is a developer.”

“And his proposal is fine, Eleanor.”

“It is a shambles, Renée.”

“Look at the substance of it, Eleanor.”

“Form is substance,” interjected Simon.

Both women shot him a scornful glance.

“So you believe,” said Eleanor.

“So you agree that form is unimportant?”

“No, Renée, I do not agree. It is unimportant in the case of certain people. Meaningless. The opposite of substance. But not all people.”

“We are going nowhere,” said Renée.

“Yes,” said Simon.

“So you are on my side?” asked Renée.

“Of course,” said Simon.

“Of course he is.”

“I am on yours too, Eleanor.”

“Can we please focus on the substance of this proposal? Phase one is only thirty houses. Why can we not approve the building of thirty houses?” asked Renée.

“Because if we approve phase one, we will be expected to approve the next five phases, and that will be a large development.”

“That is very true,” said Simon.

“I do not need your glad hand, Mr. Struthers.”

“He does not, Eleanor, need your … what’s the word?”

“Truculence, perhaps.”

“Thank you, Simon.”

“Thank
you
, Renée.”

“Now, for God’s sake, focus on the issue, Simon. I don’t need your glad hand either.”

“Yes, Renée.”

“
Yes, Renée
,” Eleanor mimicked.

“Oh, to hell with you both,” Renée said, gathering her file. “Let’s meet in a month.”

She left Eleanor and Simon in the room together.

“Well, Mr. Struthers, why don’t you run after her?”

S
IMON WAS AGING
. Y
OU
are wondering what else was happening while he settled into his new life, as he met and disappointed new people. He was aging.

Do you live in the same drowsy autumn?

There is no need to picture him doing anything when he was not at work. Picture him doing nothing, in a raiment of nothing, against a background of nothing, a pendulum swinging from each eye.

Or don’t.

He yearned. He wished age
were
so static, or that its only effect was the gravity of skin. He yearned more every day, and no matter what he did, no matter what adventures he had riding on the picaresque heels of his own libido, no matter what minor things he accomplished, he still awoke at half past seven, was a public servant at nine, at eleven o’clock his tongue tasted like tea and then, now, still, whenever he goes to bed he is one cruel inch from the nipple of fruition, no matter what is in his mouth, who is underneath him.

He yearned.

His stomach melted like wax.

T
HAT RUSH OF APPLICATIONS
, the houses, the shopping mall, took more than eighteen months to approve. They all had other duties, other responsibilities. Despite Simon’s love, they all hated each other. Simon did not understand why Leonard, especially, hated (with a fervor that grew by the day) the fact that approval took eighteen months. Simon became isolated at work. He never saw anyone socially, he bowed out of working with Eleanor and Renée, letting Leonard make his decisions for a while.

And life kept blurring. His work was tedious on a daily level—assessing applications, considering needs was more minute and
messy in practice than his mind could bear. Never a hope of seeing an idea come to life, never a policy that wasn’t sullied by others’ opinions or needs.

One small initiative kept him occupied briefly—a survey he created of new residents in the south of the city, near the land that was under review. He wrote the questions, and, despite protocol, visited people door-to-door presenting his survey. “Hello, I am Simon Struthers,” he would say, assessing them immediately. The questions on the survey gave him great pleasure: Are you married? For how long? Why? One in every twenty questions was bewildering and intrusive—often simply “Why?”—and its effect was honesty, people answering presumably out of confusion or fear. “Why?”

But learning secrets on paper wasn’t the same. Ultimately he was never, truly, invited in.

H
E FINALLY GOT HIS
hands firmly on the Dreambook, and secreted it in his office. He looked slyly through it, at first.