The Big Dream (18 page)

She thought perhaps the rest of the staff was clinging to their desks to avoid detection by the outsourcing committee. Her approach was the opposite, avoiding all the research requests on the pleasures of rimming and stock images of mahogany veneer. She knew if she kept providing those things, someone would notice it was the same over and over, and ask her to stop with three weeks severance. She wanted to offer something new.

As days passed, Research got braver, her questions more intimate in a way that had nothing to do with oral pleasure. She tried inquiries into daily urination volumes (not as much increase relative to proximity to water coolers as she had expected) or favoured workplace plants (climbing ivy, though cloth cubical walls were unclimbable, and most of the ivy wound up straggling over the floor of high productivity cubes or strangling the computer systems of low productivity cubes). She counted one-panel cartoons on bulletin boards (so much
Herman,
after all these years). She felt that this was useful information, or at least interesting. At least, she was interested.

Sometimes she did sit alone in the research room, though she felt like the tallest tree in a lightning storm. She tried to keep up with what the Internet offered, but that seemed to be mainly
variations on the direness of the economic downturn (not as bad as the Great Depression . . . or was it?) and that some women liked their vulvas cupped in their partners' palm. Her husband had always been more of a brusher than a cupper, but for the sake of research they tried both in rapid succession, with no significant variation.

This became her life, and her life became ok: counting ivy leaves and learning the CBC3 DJ rotation and sparks-behind-the-eyes orgasms even in the missionary position, contrary to all the best research. She researched cupboards and conference rooms, haughty brand-managers and under-appreciated finance specialists. There were 74 angry people in that building, 111 disillusioned, 56 remarkably naïve, and 12 beyond all reason. There was some overlap between categories.

One Wednesday, at the end of a hallway blocked by a dead dieffenbachia, Research found a staircase to the roof. Wednesday was the day of lowest absenteeism, on average. She pushed aside the plant, climbed the stairs, and thought about the researcher with his history of wok-fried bok choy and the other researcher with her hipless yet somehow voluptuous stride. She wanted to know how they were. She wanted her sex life to solve all the problems in her marriage. She wanted to fly in an airplane as if the sky were a grommet she could thread. She realized she was not going to get any of these things.

There was a small door at the top of the stairs that was obviously normally locked with a half-dozen padlocks and bolts, but was currently slightly ajar. She went out in the sunlight, seven stories closer to the sky then usual. A tiny silver jet arced above.

Various-sized metal boxes, wires, and poles were scattered over the tar-gravel rooftop. At one of the poles was the building services guy she knew – today his shirt said, “I know your Facebook password.” He was scrabbling at a small metal box attached to the pole, twisting something inside it with a pair of pliers.

“Hello,” she called.

The back beneath the thin shirt clenched. He turned, squinted into the sun.

“I'm from Research.” She walked over. “I'd like to ask you some questions.”

“What? Why?”

She picked her way over a few wires. “Why not? What are you doing?”

He shivered; seven stories made it windier. “Trying to fix the service disruption.”

“Service disruption?”

“The Internet isn't working? For the whole building? Didn't you notice?”

“I haven't been online much lately. Nothing interesting.” She shrugged. “What is your job?”

“Uhh . . .” she thought she saw blue light ream up his arm as he twisted the pliers, but he doggedly kept talking. He was, she realized, not much older than her sons. “Maintenance generalist.”

“What do you . . .” Nothing seemed exactly imperative to know, with the wind and the sadness on the boy's face as he wrangled with the wires. One suddenly snapped and the end dropped below the box with another blue wave. And no one even knew he was up here, and everything seemed worth knowing. “What do you eat for lunch, most days?”

He knelt and gazed up at her. “Butternut squash soup, oftentimes. It comes in tetrapaks, $1.99 at No Frills. I heat it in the microwave, and buy a Jamaican patty from the cafeteria. And a Coke.”

“Sounds good.” She meant it, and meant to try it. “Also – ”

More wires sproinged out of the box, seemingly spontaneously. The wind was picking up even more, but that couldn't have been why. He stood, pulling wires against his stomach as if his own intestines were escaping. “Do you have roof clearance?”

“. . . I'm Research. I go everywhere.”

“If you don't have clearance, you should probably – ” he dropped his pliers.

“ – could you please?”

She said, “I appreciate your time,” but his face remained tight and nervous. So she went back to her ergonomic chair in the windless skyless research room. She ignored the red light of her voicemail. She was deleting emails unread when the phone rang.

“Hello, you've reached Research.”

“Well, hellow there, young lady! Why doncha come down to our office to make your report? We've ordered in a pastry platter.”

“Report?”

“There's fruit, too, if you're watching your weight.”

“I didn't know . . . .”

“Of course not. You're very slender! But you know women . . . .”

“I – ”

“Of course you know women!
The tongue is one of the strongest muscles in the body
! We've read the cunnilingus and airport notes that you saved to the server and we're
very
excited to hear more. So just you come on over to the executive wing, k?” Click.

She stared out the window where yet another plane from somewhere was careening out of the sky to nowhere. No, to Pearson International Airport, Mississauga. Mississauga was someplace. It was documented.

She took her notepads, her printouts from the Transit Authority and
Men's Health.
Bits of tar-gravel transferred from her shoes to the carpet as she walked.

Two men were sprawled on a couch in the executive suite. From the quarterly update meetings, she recognized them as the company's CEO and COO, Mark and Sanjeet. There was a tray of muffin halves and Danish slices on the desk. The sky outside the big executive window was dark. Yellow-green lights flashed at the airport. She wondered who had ordered the catering, who the caterers were, and where they ate their lunch. She wondered if she was in the mood for a carrot muffin.

Sanjeet clapped his hands together like thunder. “So! What's the report?”

Research said, “Many people in this company work very hard, eat healthfully, and keep their desks tidy.”

“Yes!” said Mark. “Like you!”

“No, not like me. In different ways. There are many ways to do everything.”

“In
deed!
” cried Sanjeet. “We are eager to know about the many paths, for example, to multiple orgasms. That article for
Dream Woman
was . . . powerful!”

“There is more to life than a carefully sucked clitoris,” said Research, fact-checking herself as she spoke.

Mark's eyebrows lowered. “Of course. Like your airport research, very lofty. Were you sending it to
Dream Vacation
? Little thought-piece for the snowbirds?”

Research swayed. “There is a woman on the third floor who has memorized the photocopier manual. She works in logistics, but she has a small-machines certification. Everyone knows her, everyone calls her when the copiers bust. Her name is Marie.”

The men looked, simultaneously, dismayed. “We employ a service company for those machines.”

“Where are your notepads? How are you going to record what I'm telling you?”

A plane shuttled to the ground, red and yellow lights blinked, footsteps passed the door, a flash of conversation about “overseas workflows.” The men said nothing.

“Yoghurt is the most popular snack food in this company. Even the lactose intolerant eat the soy stuff, like Katri at
Dream Romance
. Her favourite is raspberry.”

“Aren't you interested in adventure, travel, pleasure?” Mark shoved half a raspberry Danish into her right hand.

“The airport is right there.” She pointed at the window. “I see people travel all the time. But it doesn't have much to do with me.”

Sanjeet shook his head. “We are Dream Magazines
.
Our magazines have nothing to do with the people who read them. That's what they like about them.”

“It actually might not be. We don't know everything about everyone yet.”

The windows in that office looked out onto thick purpling clouds, dancing with flecks of green lightning. She wondered who in the building had remembered an umbrella, who was unembarrassed to wear galoshes, and whose evening barbecue would be ruined by the rain. Sanjeet had just said something, but his mouth was full of muffin and she didn't quite get it – something about sexual freedom. She nodded, said, “Sounds fascinating.” As soon as Research escaped this meeting, she could check the all the coathooks, whatever closets she could find, conduct an exit poll at the front door, and have rough estimates on all these rain matters by the end of the day. And then she could start the rest of her work.

THE CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER had something going on with one of the senior marketing managers. The fact that no one knew did not make the situation exactly comfortable for either of them, but it did make it manageable. They managed to smile pleasantly at each other over Styrofoam coffee in meetings, to hand each other brown plastic stir sticks. They managed to keep their public conversations restricted to profitable innovations in kitchen-cabinet refacing. They managed to keep the flirtation so low-key they almost did not notice it themselves. Or so either would've claimed, if asked. Neither was ever asked.

He did not work in Mississauga, in the Canadian branch office where she engineered pitches, sketched designs, wrote copy, took small uncatered meetings with subordinates who complained bitterly about substandard pens and lack of creative scope. He worked in head office, in a big American high-rise, in a vast and carpeted corner office where he could have had tapestries and sculpture, mounted fishes and trophies, or at least a couch and a minifridge, if he were so inclined. But he was not so inclined. Except for the Starbucks thermos, the photos of his kids, the extra ties and Rolaids, his office was as blank and impersonal as a model kitchen.

The American CFO's duties required him to come to the Canadian office only for quarterly presentations, and for years, so he did; Mississauga was only malls and Marriotts, and his children missed him. But then, one third-quarter close, his winter-chapped hand accidentally, absently, absorbedly brushed a wool-and-nylon thigh, and he began to find more conferences, more general
meetings and updates, worthy of his time. He began to accumulate Air Miles, and she stopped answering the smiles on Lavalife. He stopped phoning his ex late at night, and she started buying lingerie in candy colours.

The lingerie was theoretical; they had not even kissed. The silky pink camisole was something she slid into on mornings of ice-pellets and conference calls, something she wore under her sweater and touched sometimes, behind a door, in the restroom, her hand stealthily sliding up her own spine, alone.

Theirs was a flirtation of short emails and patchy cellphone calls. Once, a birthday card curled into a FedEx tube. Once – and nervously – lunch alone together in the employee cafeteria. Cheese cannelloni and diet Coke for both. Except for that first surreptitious caress of a thigh, several too-lingering arm-squeezes, and once when he held her coat for her and she, reaching backwards, missed entirely and stroked her palm down the flat expanse of his belly – except for these moments, there had been no physical contact at all.

Privately, they cursed themselves for teenaged fantasies that could, doubtless, lead only down alleys of frustration and masturbation. Desire only increases loneliness.

There had been moments of opportunity unrealized, when they were both perhaps stunned to realize their own limits. Both had attended a two-day trade show, sitting together at a particleboard demonstration, at a Kitchen of the Future demonstration, at an Ikea demonstration. They had sat together in the bar, and talked of the pets they had as children, animals now dead. They talked of their parents who were dead now, too, and how lonely it felt to walk the earth knowing their parents were dead. They talked about, or at least each somehow managed to mention, what their hotel room numbers were.