Читать книгу Hardly Working - Betsy Burke - Страница 10

Ian Trutch continued to stare at me. I tried to match his stare but I couldn’t stop myself from taking inventory. My eyes went first to his face and then to the mahogany skin and black chest hair at the neck of his unbuttoned white shirt. I swallowed with difficulty. If I’d been another kind of girl, if I’d been Cleo, for example, I would have been tempted to climb down inside that crisp shirt and stay there. Maybe all day. Definitely all night. Little things, the length of his fingers, the way his cuffs circled his wrists, made me shiver.

He had eyes the color of swimming pool tile, surrounded by long, black, almost feminine lashes, and a little set of deep thinker creases between his eyebrows, reflecting his Harvard Business School prowess. His thick, silver-black, stylishly electro-shocked hair was just waiting for some girl’s hands to give it a good running through, though I suspected he was the type who didn’t like having his hair messed up. Everything else about him was immaculate. He had a knowing, ever-so-slightly cruel mouth and a pirate’s tan.

Sailing, sailing, sailing the bounding main…

It was a good thing I knew where the boundaries lay and wasn’t the sort of girl who fell for that whole superficial gorgeous man thing. If I had been a real man-eater like Cleo, I would have considered pursuing him for his body alone. Like wanting a whole bottle of Grand Marnier for yourself, it would be a sweet, intoxicating blast, but ultimately bad for you.

I stopped staring at him. He definitely clashed with the office décor, the splodgy lemon custard walls, the burnt caramel Naugahyde furniture, the mangy, pockmarked beige wall-to-wall carpet. The big question kept nagging at me. Why was a glossy high-rise type like Ian Trutch playing CEO to a low-rise walk-up organization like ours?

Jake appeared behind him. “Dinah, this is Ian Trutch. Ian, this is Dinah Nichols, our PR and communications associate.”

He reached out his hand then clasped mine in both of his. They were warm and smooth. “Dinah. Very, very nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot of good things about you.”

I swallowed. “You have?”

“You’re the girl who goes after the donors. Jake’s been telling me about you.”

“He has?”

Ian Trutch still had my hand prisoner. I knew I shouldn’t fraternize with the enemy in any way, but when he let go of it, my whole body screamed indignantly, “More, more.”

He added, “Join us, won’t you, Dinah? I’m just going to have a few words with the staff in the other room,” and then he touched my shoulder. I stood up and like a zombie, followed the two men out into the main room.

As soon as Penelope saw Ian Trutch, she bounced to her feet and went up to him. “Welcome to our branch, Mr. Trutch. Can I get you a coffee?”

Ian Trutch’s face became delectable again. He said, “Yes, thank you…and you are?”

“Penelope.”

“Penelope. A classical name for a classical beauty. Don’t wait too long for your Ulysses. I take my coffee black and steaming.”

Every woman in the room was staring, breathless, vacillating between envy and lust.

“Sit down, Mr. Trutch. I’ll bring it to you,” said Penelope.

But Mr. Trutch didn’t sit down. His tone became snappy. “There’s going to be a meeting in the boardroom upstairs in exactly thirteen minutes. Ten o’clock sharp. Everyone should be present.” He took one sip of the coffee Penelope had brought him, put down the mug and walked toward the back door. On his way out, he winked at me and said so softly that only I could hear, “Get ready for the massacre, Dinah.”

A little laugh escaped me.

He’d recognized me for who I was.

The worthy adversary.

I was looking forward to the battle, to showing him that our branch of Green World International was a great team. Excluding Penelope, of course.

Jake looked slightly ill. He turned away and headed back into his office. I followed him in. He sat down heavily then looked up at me with his tired bloodhound eyes. His hand was already dipping into his bottom desk drawer. I had a microsecond of panic that he might have a bottle hidden in there but he pulled out a Bounty Bar, ripped it open, and finished it in two bites. Then, ignoring the little chocolate blob dangling from his moustache, he tore open an Oh Henry! and gestured to the drawer as if to say, “Help yourself.”

“No thanks, Jake. I’ll just sniff the wrappers. I’m counting calories.” I was always counting calories. Four thousand, five thousand, six thousand…

He didn’t come out and say, “Ian Trutch doesn’t belong here,” but I knew he wanted to.

“Jeeee-susss,” sighed Jake, shaking his head. “I’m not sure I’m ready for this. I’ve got kind of a creepy feeling. A few years ago a feeling like this would have had me out of here and heading for the pub.”

I couldn’t stand to see Jake depressed. “Well, let’s think positively about this.”

He gave a sad little chuckle. “Ah…yeah, sure, Dinah. That would be the world’s greatest female cynic talking to the world’s greatest male cynic.”

“Well…there are some donors out there who respond better to the kind of image that Ian Trutch has. Maybe a little polish could attract more of the kind of donors we’re always trying to attract.”

“Polish, Dinah? I don’t know. I guess…”

I could see how troubled Jake was by all of it, by the suit that followed the lines of the perfect body perfectly, the chunky gold Rolex watch and sapphire signet ring, the aftershave that smelled like a leathery, wood-paneled library in an exclusive men’s club.

I’d spent most of my dating life with Mike, who was gorgeous in a subtle downscale kind of way. But Mike was a man who had, maximum, three changes of clothes, the highlight of which were artfully faded jeans and a pair of expensive but battered Nikes. Formal for Mike was a clean T-shirt.

It was the first time I’d ever been monitored and streamlined by such chic management. When I stepped back out into the main part of the office, I realized that it was a first for all the other women, too. The female energy was radioactive, buzzing out of control. The other women in the office were primed, and when ten o’clock rolled around and we trooped up to the boardroom, they were all ready to convert to his religion, whatever it might be.

Ian Trutch strode into the room, stood at the end of the long table, looking around him as though he were checking out all the emergency exits, then he nailed each and every one of us with those blue eyes and said, “First of all, I know how you’re feeling and I just want to reassure you all that my presence here does not represent what you think it represents.”

The tense expressions relaxed only slightly.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard from the main branch, but I want it to be understood immediately that this branch and the main branch represent two situations and methodologies that are in no way analogous. Main branch is the administrative headquarters so it follows that it was getting top-heavy with administrative personnel.”

Top-heavy? According to Moira’s version, it was the little guys who’d been axed back East. The people who did the legwork. The people like us.

“I’ve been told that this branch is known for its team-work.” He smiled. “But it needs to be stated that the individual player, for the sake of the team, will be rewarded for any private initiative taken in terms of information exchange. In the weeks that I’ll be monitoring this office, I’ll expect the maximum effort from everyone. It goes without saying that if there is deadwood here, then it will have to go. It’s also possible that there will be no redundancies. I want it to be known that there will be no unnecessary suffering. So let me just finish by saying that I am looking forward to a fruitful collaboration.” He smiled radiantly.

There was an audible group gulp. We weren’t sure whether we were praiseworthy or being judged guilty before the crime had even been committed.

And then he launched into his strategy. It was all in code of course, full of very businessy-sounding words that had little to do with the way Green World International operated. Best practices, upstream, downstream, outsourcing. Somewhere around the word input I looked sideways at Cleo. She had obviously fallen into a fantasy involving Ian Trutch and a round of input, output, input, output…

Lisa Karlovsky was sitting on the other side of me. She elbowed me and scribbled on a pad, “You following this?”

I scribbled back, “Sort of. Don’t trust him.”

She scribbled, “Don’t care. Waiting for him to smile again. Catch those nice dimples.”

Cleo, who was on the other side of me, grabbed Lisa’s pad and wrote, “Like to see all dimples. Not just head office dimples but branch office dimples too.”

For the rest of the meeting, I watched Lisa and Cleo watching him. The women were all working hard to understand as much as possible of Ian’s talk, but also to keep a euphoric expression off their faces, their jaws from relaxing. Except for Penelope, the little priss. She was taking notes briskly.

When Ian had finally finished, Jake stood up and went over to corner him in private. Cleo, Lisa and I huddled together.

Lisa whispered to us, “So. What was it we were supposed to understand from all that razzmatazz business-speak?”

“Sorry, I drifted. I didn’t follow it. He’s so amazing to look at, to breathe in,” said Cleo.

“I’m not sure,” I offered. “It sounds good at first, like we’re all supposed to be working together, but then you realize that what he’s really saying is that we’re all supposed to be spying on each other to see who the biggest slack-ass around here is and then go running to tell him about it.”

Lisa said, “I totally lost track. I was imagining what he’d be like naked and horizontal.”

“Don’t do it to yourself, Lisa,” I said. “He’s a complete vampire and will suck up all your goodness. I know because I called up Moira in the East and got a bit of dirt. Four empty desks, she said. No higher management. Just little guys. She couldn’t talk but I’m going to call her back and get more on him. We need to know the enemy.”

Lisa looked woeful. “But main branch is much bigger, Dinah. He just said it himself. It’s a whole different thing.”

“I’m immune to his charms. If I have to go down, I’m going down kicking.”

Cleo smiled. “You take men too seriously, Dinah.”

Lisa nodded.

I shook my head. “He belongs to a win-lose world. You either have to be beneath him, or above him, and if you are above him, he’ll take you down. I know the type. The animal kingdom is full of them. There is no win-win here.”

But Cleo was not discouraged. She eyed him hungrily. If she continued at the rate she’d been going, her sexual odometer would soon be into the triple digits. She was a woman who was used to taking men at face value, but taking them.

“We’re not the only ones lusting around here,” said Lisa, nodding toward Ash.

We all looked over at Ash who was watching Ian. She had a soft glazed-over look, never seen before that day.

I said, “She’s got him where she wants him all week. He’s going to be in her office going over the books.”

Cleo said. “She’s going to have human contact? Somebody’s actually going to talk to her face-to-face? It’ll give her a nervous breakdown to have to look him in the eye.”

After work that day, Jake, Ida, Lisa, Cleo and I got together at our usual, Notte’s Bon Ton, a pastry and coffee shop on Broadway, just a few blocks from our office, to save the world.

“Energy crisis? What we do is we exploit people power,” said Lisa. “Harness the energy of all those people who go to the gym to pump and cycle off all the fat the planet has labored so hard to supply to their necks and waistlines. We hook ’em up to generators. We don’t tell ’em, though. So they’re giving back some of the energy they stole from the grasslands when wheat was planted and the flour was ground up and baked into the donuts that they are right now stuffing into their mouths, right? Very cost efficient.” She punctuated this by sticking a cream-filled pastry into her mouth and wiping it broadly.

“Sure, Lisa,” I said.

“We go back to the horse and buggy,” said Jake. “Best natural fertilizer in the world, horse poop. And you drink one too many, your horse knows the way home.”

“Windmills,” I said. “The old-fashioned Dutch kind. They could do something arty with the sails, paint them. Stick them out in Delta. People could live in them. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

“Trampoline generated power,” said Jake. “Kids love trampolines. You harness that bounce, you could light up the whole city. Or that thing they do when you’re trying to drive across the country and they kick the back of your seat for thousands of miles. Man, if we could harness that…”

I shook my head. “We can’t do that one, Jake, exploitation of minors.”

“I’m just glad I won’t be around when the big food shortage hits,” said Ida. “And if I am, I’ll be too tough and stringy for anybody’s tastes.”

“Ida,” gasped Lisa, “you’re not suggesting cannibalism, are you?”

Ida pontificated. “I figure it like this. With the agricultural society going at it with all those nitrogen fertilizers, it’s going to be hard to return to being hunter/gatherers. What’s going to be left for us to gather or to hunt? You can’t even be a decent vegetarian anymore. I figure a nice roast brisket of fat arms dealer is a good place to start.”

“Here, here,” everybody agreed.

Cleo said, “Okay now, forget saving the world. I’ve got a headline.”

Now that we’d all given up pretending we didn’t fritter time away surfing the Net during working hours, we called our surfing Headline Research. At the end of the day we’d throw them at each other and play True or False. Losers paid for the pastries.

Cleo started with, “Delays In Sex Education, Education Workers Request Training.”

Jake’s was “Girl Guide Helps Snake Bite Victim In Kootneys.”

Ida gave us, “President Urges Dying Soldiers To Do It For Their Country.”

Lisa’s was “Cougar Terrorizes Burnaby Dress Shop, Trashes Autumn Line.”

I finished off the round with, “Scientists Say Oceans’ Fish Depleted By Ninety-Five Percent.”

Everyone turned on me, protesting.

Cleo said, “Ah, Dinah, there you go again. You’re being an awful bore. I know you’re an eco-depressive but couldn’t you just play it close to your chest for once.”

Lisa said, “Don’t focus on those negative things, Dinah, or you’ll draw them to you like a magnet. Life isn’t as bad as you think it is. Your glass could be half-full if you wanted it to be.”

I thought this was good coming from a woman who had been used all her life by professional navel-gazers and full-time fresh air inspectors she called “lovers.”

Ida sat back and contemplated her rum baba then said, “Be as negative as you like, Dinah, because by the time they really heat this planet up I’ll either be six feet under or too gaga to care.”

“Idaaa…” said Jake.

“There are worse things,” said Ida.

I held up my hands. “I come by it honestly, guys. I have an illustriously cynical mother. Now you all have to vote. Which is the fake?” I asked.

“Cougar,” said Cleo.

“I agree. Cougar,” said Ida.

“Girl Guide. Jake, you’re a fake,” said Lisa. “It’s an old joke, that one.”

“You nailed me, Lisa,” said Jake, his hands in the air.

“News for all you fish eaters, and that means you, too, Cleo,” I said. “The ocean’s fish stocks are only depleted by ninety percent and most of what you get these days is fish farm stuff. You should know that. That’s the other fake.”

“Oh friggin’ great. Big consolation. But you and I win, Dinah,” said Lisa, “which means the rest of you guys are paying for our cream puffs. The cougar headline was in the Sun this morning. I’m surprised you guys missed it. He’s been roaming around Vancouver and they just can’t seem to catch him.”

“We’re getting these cougar sightings around here from time to time,” said Jake, “but it’s been a while now. Then there’s the coyote situation. Damned forestry practices. They cut down the damned forests, these big cats lose their damned habitat, have no damned place to go, so what does anybody expect? They come into town on the log booms, stir up trouble.”

“If I didn’t know better I’d say you were making it up,” said Cleo.

“No way,” said Lisa, “and these are not happy animals. They’re feeling pretty crazy mad by the time they hit town. Look behind you when you’re walking down the street.”

“I knew about the coyotes. But cougars,” said Cleo. “Who would have thought it?”

I said, “The only wildlife you’ve had your eye trained on lately, Cleo, is homo sapiens, the male of the species.”

“True, true.” She smiled.

“There hasn’t been a cougar sighting since you’ve been here. Not in the last two years,” I said.

“There’s a whole variety of urban critters out there, believe me, Cleo. Our building was skunked last week,” said Lisa. “Little stripey guy got into the basement bin under the garbage chute. Quite the distinctive odor is skunk.”

“And speaking of distinctive odors,” said Ida. “How come the new CEO, Mr. Ferrari, isn’t here stuffing his face with butter cream bons bons like the rest of us? Boy, does he smell good.”

Jake polished his bald spot nervously and gave his mustache a little good luck tug. “Time management thing.”

“Yeah. The management ain’t got no time for us, eh?” joked Lisa.

“And what about the new girl?” Ida went on. “What’s her name again?”

“Penelope,” said Jake, perking up.

“How come she isn’t here either?” asked Ida.

Cleo said, “You have to make a choice, Ida. It’s Penelope or Dinah. The office virgin has taken a disliking to poor Di.”

“I thought Ash was the office virgin,” piped up Ida.

“We don’t really know anything about Ash,” said Cleo, grinning and wiggling her eyebrows.

“Just to change the subject slightly, I wonder how Ian Trutch is going to go down with our Indian volunteers?” Lisa pondered.

“Lisa!” We all pounced. “You can’t say that. It’s so politically incorrect.”

“Oh jeez, you guys. Dots not feathers.”

We all sat back. “Oh…okay then.”

Dinah Nichols the eco-depressive. It was another one of the reasons I was seeing Thomas. And again, I liked to blame my mother for forcing me to absorb a lifetime of scientific data that promises nothing good.

At night when I closed my eyes, the vision came to me on schedule. I could see the whole planet from a distance, the way the astronauts must have first seen it. But I saw it with an eagle’s eye, first hovering way off, out in infinity, and then honing in and zooming to all the trouble spots. The Chernobyls, the devastated rain forests, El Nino, the quakes and mudslides, the beached whales, the factories everywhere pumping and flushing out their toxins, cars, a gazillion cars studding the planet, and a brown sludge forming around the big blue ball like a sinister new stratosphere. It was only headline overload, but sometimes it got me down so low, it was hard to get out of bed.

Tuesday

By 8:00 a.m., I had learned that Ian Trutch was damaging our grassroots image even further by staying in a plush suite on the Gold Floor of the Hotel Vancouver. After a brilliant example of minor urban infiltration, I also found out very brusquely that nonguest people like me weren’t allowed to wander its corridors, not even with the lame excuse of having to deliver business-related papers. No siree.

When I got back out to the street after the nasty run-in with the Gold Floor receptionist, there was a parking ticket shoved under the windshield wiper of my battered red antique Mini. I swear, even to this day, that they moved that fire hydrant next to the car while I was inside.

I drove fast back to Broadway and the Green World International office. I was twenty minutes late for work because I had to play musical parking spaces for half an hour and then run ten blocks to the office. Of course, Ian Trutch was there to see me arrive late and all sweaty and flustered. He gave me an inquisitive blue stare and tiny smile, then went off to monitor somebody else.

I went into my office and shut the door. It was opened again immediately by Lisa, who pretended to have important business with me but was really just hiding from one of the needy cases. Every so often, some loafer would shuffle in off the street and say, “Hey, man, I’m a charitable cause, you guys do stuff for charities, so waddya gonna do for me?” And Lisa, being Miss High Serotonin Levels, and “good with people,” had been elected to handle them.

Lisa eyed my collection of office toys then picked up my Gumby doll and tied his legs in a knot. I looked up at her. With her blond hair in braids, her lack of makeup, and loose pastel Indian cottons over woolen sweaters, she looked as though she’d stepped through a time warp directly from Haight-Ashbury, from a gathering of thirtysomething flower children.

I said, “Another passenger from Dreck Central, eh, Lisa?”

“Shhh. It’s that bushy guy again. His name’s Roly. You know the nutty one with the long gray hair and beard who always wears the full rain gear right down to the Sou’wester? He keeps coming around and asking for me. I guess I shouldn’t have been so nice to him.”

“Lisa. You don’t know how not to be nice.”

“Shhh. If he hears my voice he’ll want to come in here. I mean, I feel really awful. It’s not that I mind him really. He’s quite polite. Quite a gentleman really. Not like some of the human wreckage that washes up here. But I just don’t feel like dealing with him today. He’s so darn persistent. He keeps asking me out for lunch. I mean, he’s a street person. Don’t get me wrong. He’s clean for a street person but he wears that nutty rain gear all the time. You just have to look at him to know who’ll be paying for the lunch. Yours truly. If it wasn’t so sad it would be sweet.”

“Hey, but Lise. It’s cool. It’s a date. That’s more than I can say for myself.”

“Sure. Right. And that Penelope’s driving me nutty, too. You know what she said? She thinks we should clean up our image. She says our phone voices are no good, that my way of speaking when I deal with the public is too raunchy.”

“Oh God, Lisa, for her to even use the word raunchy is sexual tourism. What could she possibly know about raunchy?”

My phone rang as if on cue. I picked it up with a voice as smooth as extra-virgin olive oil, and said, “Green World International. Dinah Nichols speaking.”

“Halliwell’s here,” said the phone voice.

I put my hand over the mouthpiece and whispered to Lisa, “The pain-in-the-butt printer,” took my hand off and said, “Hello, Mr. Halliwell.”

Halliwell drawled, “Are we going to get that campaign material some time this decade, Miss Nichols, or should I give you up for dead?”

I watched as Lisa put down Gumby and picked up Mr. Potato Head. She ripped out all of his features and limbs then rearranged them in unlikely places.

I pulled my Magic Eight Ball out of my drawer, gave it a shake, and read the message into the phone, “Well, Mr. Halliwell, signs point to yes.”

“Yes dead? Or yes this decade?” he growled.

“This decade,” I said.

That seemed to satisfy him. He grunted and hung up.

Lisa said, “I guess I better go back and deal with the dreck. Hey Dinah, don’t forget about the protest tomorrow, eh? We should be able to get out and back over lunchtime.”

“Yeah, okay. Where did you say it was?”

But she had already gone.

After that, with Ian Trutch’s nearby presence forcing me into uber-employee mode, I plunged myself into real work and finished all the campaign material for Halliwell that morning.

Around lunchtime, Jake knocked on my door. He looked like a kid on Christmas Eve. “There’s somebody here for you, Dinah. Waiting by the coffeemaker.”

I left my desk and went out to see who it was.

My mother was dressed in her favorite town outfit; hiking boots, anorak, and gold and diamond jewelry. Everyone in the main room was staring at her and groveling and calling her Dr. Nichols with awe in their voices. My mother is, after all, quite a famous scientist. She’s been on TV countless times to talk about the destruction of the natural order and extinction of the planet’s wildlife.

I said, “Mom. You’re supposed to be in Alaska.”

“Cancelled. Sent one of the masters students. Old enough to know what he’s doing by now. Came over with the new undergrads. To break them in, you know.”

She always came to Vancouver in her own boat, unless the weather was really rough. She made her students come along as crew because it was important to know if they were sea-worthy or not. She moored in the marina under the Burrard Bridge.

“Thought we might have a bite of lunch then do a spot of shopping.”

It was a good thing Ian Trutch was out of the room because then she got that tone in her voice. “Di Di. I thought we could make it a belated birthday lunch, poppy. Have a reservation at the Yacht Club. Then we can pick out a nice little birthday treat for you.” It only took those few syllables, Di Di and poppy, to make me feel twelve years old again.

Half an hour later, I was inside the Yacht Club lunching with my mother. She plunged her knife into the thick steak and carved. A mountain of roast potatoes filled the rest of her plate, and on another plate, vegetable lasagna. And after that, she’d be ready for the dessert tray to roll by, perhaps even twice.

I stared bleakly at my chef’s salad. It looked the way I felt; sad and a little limp.

It was unfair, so unfair that my mother should be statuesque and lean, with an aristocratic bone structure, and the appetite of ten men, and I should be like one of the scullery maids in her castle, of the shorter, stockier, full-thighed peasant variety. Not that I’m fat. I’m not fat. My thighs are simply my genetic inheritance. No amount of dieting would ever add the extra length I desired. As I’d often said to Thomas, my mother was Beluga caviar; I was Lumpfish.

“I thought perhaps a rather nice navy-blue duffel coat I saw down in that British import shop near Kerrisdale,” she said, through her mouthful.

Oh great, I thought, then I can walk through the streets looking like an enormous navy-blue duffel bag.

She was the only woman I knew who could wear hiking gear and diamonds together, talk with her mouth full, and inspire the husbands lunching with their wives at other tables to sneak longing glances at her. Even though it was a deception really, my mother’s entire look, her vibration, her persona, said, “Come and get me. We’ll have hours of athletic no-strings-attached sex. After a brisk climb to the top of the Himalayas, of course.” My mother demands a lot from her men, but never in the way that they hope or expect.

“I know what I want for my birthday, Mom.”

“Do you? Oh, lovely. Tell me then.”

I told her.

Her hands froze in midair. She didn’t know whether to put her fork down or move it to her mouth. All the color had drained from her face. “Don’t ask me that, Dinah. You simply can’t ask me that,” she said, quietly.

“Of course I can, Mom.”

“But it would be like opening Pandora’s Box. You’ve no idea.”

“I know. That is the idea. I want to open Pandora’s Box. I have to. It’s me we’re talking about. Not you. I can’t wait forever. You’ve got to tell me. First of all, everyone needs to know about their parents even if it’s only for genetic purposes, to eliminate the possibilities of transmitting diabetes, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, porphyria…”

“Porphyria, Dinah? The disease of vampires? Good lord, dear, the only vampire in our family was Uncle Fred who worked for the Internal Revenue.”

“Now, Mom. I need to know now. Before something happens to one or the other of us.”

My mother flashed me a startled look. She sat very still for what seemed like an eternity. I’ll always remember the moment, because it could have gone either way and I would be a different sort of person for it today, wouldn’t I? White sails slid past the Yacht Club window and sliced through the glistening windy October ocean.

Slowly, my mother started to move. She reached down for her bag, pulled out a pen and piece of paper, wrote something down, then offered it to me. “This may be out of date but I don’t think so, if what I’ve heard through the grapevine is true. I don’t know if you ever met Rupert Doyle, rather a long time ago…”

I had a memory of a tall lanky ecstatic man, hair like tiny black bedsprings, bouncing me on his shoulders. I recalled storytelling after some big meals, and hearing from my room later the waves of hysterical adult laughter rising up to me until I drifted off to sleep. He told stories of exotic places where the landscape was in brighter warmer colors and people died suddenly and dramatically.

I said, “When I was little. He was often over at the house, I think.”

“Yes. That’s right. He might be able to help you. That’s all I’m going to say on the subject. You do what you like. But after this moment, I don’t want to hear another word about it for as long as I live. Do you understand, Dinah? Not one word.”

Well, happy, happy birthday.

The words scribbled on the piece of paper were Rupert Doyle, Eldorado Hotel.

That night, at home, I Googled Rupert Doyle. The situation was looking good. Up came a number of Web sites listing documentaries that Rupert Doyle had produced, some of them award winners. War zones, famine zones, and sometimes, royal sex scandal zones. Where there was disaster, hunger en masse, or a violent uprising, Rupert Doyle was there getting it on videotape for posterity. There was even a photo. It looked like the man I remembered, but twenty-five years older.

At work I was puffed up with pride just thinking about Rupert Doyle. I was already a taller, smarter, longer-thighed person for having his name written on that little slip of paper. I couldn’t wait to tell Thomas about it. Around the office, I managed to drop the name “Rupert Doyle” into at least three work-focused conversations that had nothing to do whatsoever with the kind of thing Rupert Doyle was involved with, like political documentaries about South America or Africa or the UK.

While Jake was talking about Shelter Recycling Project funds, I really pushed my luck and said, “You know, perhaps we could get Rupert Doyle, an old family friend of mine, to document the Shelter Recycling Project. I’m sure he’d do it if I asked him.”

Everyone looked at me as if to say, “Enough with this Doyle guy already, Dinah.”

Then Ian Trutch said, “Rupert Who?”

And I sort of stammered and said, “Rupert Doyle’s a very important person, a film producer.”

“Never heard of him,” said Ian Trutch.

So I blathered on, “Well, he’s an important person. He’s like…ah…Michael Moore. Would you say no to Michael Moore if he offered to come along and do a short for your organization? No, you wouldn’t. It’s about the same thing.” I was getting red in the face by then, and feeling quite small.

Wednesday

The portico of the Eldorado Hotel was framed in ceramic tile that must have once been white but was now stained yellow. The glass in its doorway was smudged with a month’s worth of dirty handprints. Inside, the air smelled of smoke, stale beer and Lysol. The sound of peppery upbeat music shuddered through the whole hotel. Behind a cramped reception desk with an old bronze grate, at the start of the corridor, a man with a papery thin skin poked letters into numbered slots. I cleared my throat and said, “Excuse me, I’m looking for Rupert Doyle. I was told he had a room here.” The man jerked his head toward the music and said, “You’ll find him in the lounge.” Then he leaned forward, about to become confidential. His face crinkled up like an accordion and he added, “Drinking with the Cubans.”

I hesitated then hurried down the corridor. When I stepped into the lounge, I felt as though I were inside a large streaky bell pepper. The walls were a wet dark red with the old wooden siding painted green and yellow. A mud-colored linoleum dance floor, stippled by a million stiletto heels, took up the centre of the lounge. A chubby middle-aged couple moved across it to a salsa rhythm, seeing only each other.

Up at the bar, a huge man was hunched in conversation with a short fat dark man. The tall man had the Rupert Doyle hair I remembered except that it was completely silver and he had a silver three-day growth of beard to match. His tall powerful bearlike body was almost exactly the same except for a slight thickening through the waist and chest. Otherwise, he was the same.

I approached him uncertainly. “Rupert Doyle?”

He swung around, saw me and said, “Christ.”

Now he was frowning.

“Mr. Doyle?”

“Do I know you?” He was cautious.

“Sort of,” I replied.

He was handsome. One of what I call the electric men. You can see ideas sparking in their eyes, the life force coursing through their bodies. As if they’d been given a double dose of energy right at the start. There was still a remnant of that old ecstasy in his face, but it had been tested over the years and now was worn down to vague contentment.

I didn’t give him a chance to blow it.

I came right out with it.

I said, “I’m Marjory Nichol’s daughter. My mother said I’d find you here.”

He put his hand on his heart. “Oh Jesus.” Then he put his hand to his head. “Christ. What a shock. That explains it. You scared the life out of me.”

“I did?”

“Just give me a second. Now. Marjory Nichols. Hell. You’re…? Goddamn. You’re…uh…wait a minute…Diane.”

“Dinah. You used to come round to our house years ago.”

“Well, sure I did. Of course I did. Stand back and let me look at you. How about that. So, well… How about that? Goddamn. You’re Marjory’s daughter.”

“Yes, I am.”

“How is your mom, anyway? How’s Marjory. I haven’t seen her in ages. I keep meaning to get in touch but life has a way of conspiring against old friendships….”

“Fine. She’s fine.”

“I keep meaning to get in touch but I’m often on the move. You know, I caught her on TV, that interview she did on the dying oceans for the BBC, a couple of years back. She sure is something. I was about to pick up the phone but as usual was interrupted by a business call. I’m rarely in the country these days and when I am, it’s all work.”

“She’s often on the move too so…”

“Yes, right, well, good, Marjory’s daughter. Unbelievable how time flies. You were just a little kid the last time I saw you….”

Then I blurted it out. No formalities. “I made her tell me. How to find you. You know? She knew how badly I wanted to meet my father. And well, now, here we are.”

Rupert Doyle’s eyes opened a little wider and took on the shape of half-moons as he peered. He took a step backward and held up his hands as if he were pushing me away. “Nooo,” he exhaled. “No, no. Just a minute now. You’re making a big mistake.”