Читать книгу Hardly Working - Betsy Burke - Страница 9

The man-shaped silhouette waved.

I ran over and opened up the French doors, then stepped out on the balcony to help the guy down.

“Simon. You’re back. Come inside before somebody calls the police.”

With expert rock-climber’s maneuvers, Simon lowered himself down to the balcony, then began to haul his cords down after himself and wind them up. He was grinning the whole time. I stepped aside to let him into the apartment, then I picked up his equipment and passed it through to him. He stood in the middle of the living room, straightened up and brushed himself off. He was dressed in black, and very lithe, thinner than when I’d last seen him, two years before.

“Hey, Di. Happy birthday. Figured I’d drop in on you. Hey, so cool to see you.”

Joey muttered, “Now that’s what I call an entrance.”

I smiled at Cleo and Joey. “This is the Simon Larkin I’m always telling you about. The one I grew up with. The one who shared my dog biscuits.”

“Yeah,” said Simon. “You could say that Di’s my honorary sister.”

Joey batted his eyelids and leapt forward to offer his hand. “Hi, great to meet you, Simon. I’m the famous actor, Joey Sessna. You may have seen me in—”

I punched Joey’s upper arm.

He yowled. “Ouch. Jeez, Dinah. Wha’d you do that for?”

“Simon doesn’t know who you are, Joey. He doesn’t watch TV. He doesn’t have to. He has real-life entertainment. When he isn’t scaling some terrifying rock face, he’s infiltrating some interesting urban landmark. Right, Simon?”

“Hey, babe. That’s me.” He grabbed me and squeezed me in one of his death lock hugs. Cleo and Joey were practically drooling. Simon was tall and toned with messy strawberry-blond curls and navy-blue eyes. He looked like a Renaissance angel in Lululemon sportswear.

Cleo grabbed my glass out of my hand, poured some wine into it, and handed it to Simon. “I’m Cleo Jardine.”

He said, “Thanks, Beauty,” and downed it in one gulp.

Joey began to jabber at Simon and I started to whisper to Cleo, “Before you get any ideas, there’s something I’ve got to tell you about Simon….” But she and Joey were so involved in ogling him that they couldn’t hear me.

“Hey Di,” said Simon, “got any growlies in the house? I’m perishing with hunger.”

I knew what was in my fridge. The Empty Fridge Diet was the most successful one I’d tried so far. We quibbled for a few minutes, then decided to call out for Chinese food when Cleo offered to pay.

When the food arrived, we all attacked it like starving refugees. But after a minute or two, I noticed Cleo and Joey making way for Simon as he helped himself two and three and four times. Simon had that effect on people.

Joey’s chatter turned into a runaway train as he tried to impress Simon with his TV and movie credits. Simon just grinned and nodded but I doubted he knew what Joey was talking about.

I said quietly to Cleo, “Simon is a bottomless pit. You don’t ever want to invite him over for dinner.”

A sly look came over her face. “I was thinking I could take him to one of those all-you-can-eat smorgasbords.”

Finally, when all the little cardboard cartons were empty, Simon rubbed his stomach and beamed angelically. “That was a nice little snack. We can get a proper meal a little later, huh, Dinah? After we’ve been out for your surprise birthday treat.”

“A proper meal? What were we stuffing into our faces just now? And a surprise? It’s after midnight, Simon. I’ve got a big day at the office tomorrow. The CEO’s coming in from the national headquarters…”

“Dinah, I’m bitterly disappointed. When was midnight ever late for you? Better face it. You’re only thirty and you’re so far over the hill you might as well just lie down and roll the last little bit of the way into your grave.” He fatefully shook his head.

I took the bait. I leapt up and began to run around, clearing up, snatching glasses out of hands and throwing away balled-up paper napkins and empty takeout boxes. “Okay, so where are we going?”

“Like I said, it’s a surprise. And I should add that I actually put some research into this.” I was very familiar with Simon’s brand of surprise. I both dreaded and longed for it.

Cleo and Joey looked at each other, then at Simon and me, and said in chorus, like two schoolchildren, “Can we come, too?”

“You don’t know what you’re getting yourselves in for. This is my whale rub friend,” I said.

“Oh my God,” said Cleo melodramatically, “not your whale rub friend? Now would that have something to do with massage?”

“Whale rub?” chirped Joey. “It sounds obscene.”

“I’ll tell you about it sometime,” I said, “when I’m really, really drunk.”

Simon nodded and chuckled. “Yeah. I’d forgotten about the whale rub.”

“Please, Simon, can we come too, wherever it is you’re taking her?” schmoozed Cleo. “I hate to be left out of the party.”

“Can we, Simon, can we?” asked Joey.

Simon moved into his inimitable and rare business mode. “I don’t know. You’re going to have to be fast. Comfortable clothes. Dark stuff. No high-heeled shoes, eh, babe?” He directed this at Cleo. “No tail ends that could hang out or get caught in or on something. We should get going, Di. We’ve got a bit of a tight and squeaky time frame here.”

I said, “What he means, is that if we don’t have the timing perfect, we’ll be like mice in a trap, squeaking our heads off. Simon doesn’t have much respect for legalities.”

“Aw, c’mon now, Di. I’ve got a most excellent lawyer. So let’s breeze on outa here,” said Simon.

Joey went back to his place to change and I lent Cleo something in black. I had a closetful. Nothing hides the fat better than black. While we were getting ready, Simon was going through my kitchen cupboards. He managed to find an old bag of sultana raisins, some chocolate chips, half a box of muesli, and a joke tin of escargot that I’d won at a New Year’s raffle. He inhaled all my remaining food supplies and announced that it was time to leave.

Simon guided us up to the roof of the Hotel Vancouver in Mission Impossible style, dodging porters and chambermaids, coaxing us through poorly-lit, forlorn hotel arteries that gave off stale and slightly greasy-smelling odors, corridors and dark places that had a vague presence of skittering creatures nearby—rats, mice, pigeons. All the way up the endless flights of stairs, he whispered, “Don’t fall behind.”

I managed to keep up with Simon. Joey, who was skinny and hyperactive, was just behind me. I sprinted along but my legs felt it around the tenth floor. Cleo, who was only interested in physical activity if there was a man dangled like a carrot at the end of her efforts, lagged about a floor behind us all, complaining that she wished she’d made her last will and testament before we’d left. We went up and up and up until we reached a door. We followed Simon out into a long musty narrow corridor lined with tiny gabled windows that looked out onto the city, a zone where chambermaids must have slept once, country girls who cried into their pillows night after night until the city was finally able to distract them.

Once he had coaxed us all out onto the roof, Simon explained. “The idea behind a good urban infiltration is to take the road less traveled, find those forgotten back routes and rooms. For example, I’ve got a friend who did an infiltration in a part of the University of Toronto. He kind of lost his way and ended up taking a tunnel to another wing that had all these more or less abandoned barrels stored there. They were full of slime. No kidding. Later he found out the barrels were used to store eyeballs. Hundreds of thousands of eyeballs. Must have been part of the ophthalmology department. That’s the fun of it. Discovering things. He said it was a pretty freaky place. Could have been a hiding place for all kinds of crazies.”

We were seated precariously on the green copper roofing looking out over the myriad of city lights under the cloudy night sky. The gray stone of the hotel plunged downward just a few feet from where we sat. We could see between the glass high-rises to the North Shore and Grouse Mountain high up in the distance. Beyond the dense bright core of downtown in the other direction I could see the Burrard and Granville Bridges, the beads of car lights in constant motion.

Simon opened his small backpack and pulled out a bottle of Brut. “For you, Di. Happy birthday, eh?”

“Jeez, Simon, if somebody had told me that I was going to toast my thirtieth birthday on the rooftop of the Hotel Vancouver, quite a different picture would have come to mind.”

“It’s exciting,” shivered Cleo, paler and stiller than usual.

Joey nodded in agreement, looking no less terrified.

Simon could have been telling Cleo and Joey that the earth was flat and the moon was made of blue cheese and they would have had the same expressions on their faces. Simon was so decorative, so distractingly gorgeous. I should have, I really should have told them what else he was. And wasn’t.

“Fascinating,” oozed Cleo.

“Absolutely,” agreed Joey.

“Now I have something to say,” I announced.

“Here, here,” said Cleo.

“I have to inform you all that Penelope Longhurst…”

“Oh God, here we go,” said Cleo.

“Penelope Longhurst has decided that I, Dinah Nichols, am a man-eater.”

“A what?” squealed Cleo.

“How quaint,” said Joey.

“You been up to tricks while I been away, Di?” asked Simon. He laughed, took the Brut bottle back, popped its cork, took a swig and handed it back to me.

“Not enough tricks,” I said.

“Now let me see,” said Cleo. “There are the Joan Crawford, Lana Turner, Sharon Stone, Madonna, Hollywood kinds of man-eaters. Then there are the literary kinds—the Iris Murdochs and the Sylvia Plaths who eat men like air.”

Joey said, “Actually, the image that comes to my mind is more basic—a jungle animal, a lioness ravaging some poor male.”

“If only I had it in me, Joey. I hate to say it, but that Penelope’s starting to piss me off big-time,” I said.

“We’re pretty sure she was sexually traumatized at some point in her young life when she was at Swiss finishing school,” said Cleo.

I muttered, “I wish somebody would sexually traumatize me. It’s been nearly three years if you don’t count that one stupid little mistake with Mike. Here’s my point; if the shoe doesn’t fit, cram your foot in a little harder until it does. Here’s to me, Dinah Nichols, man-eater.” I raised the bottle and drank.

Monday

I felt as though I had a hamster wheel in my head. And worse, the hamster was hungover. I made a list of all the no-brainers I could do that day to make myself look busier than I was. Penelope wafted past my open door with her The-Intact-Hymen-Shall-Inherit-the-Earth look on her face. Jake was right behind her and when I caught his eye, he pointed at her and mimed eating something. Yipeee. He was sending her on her way to do gopher errands.

I felt a bit better and was just contemplating how to continue avoiding any real work when the office intercom suddenly erupted with Ida’s voice at top volume. “CODE BLUE, and I mean REALLY REALLY BLUE.” I raced out of my office and into the main room.

What was left of breathable air was bombarded with fragrant powders and atomized scents. A frenzy of beautifying shook the office. Jake came out of his office, too, and looked on, shaking his head.

Ida’s voice came over the intercom again. “Code Blue about to advance.”

We all raced over to the window. On the street below, a black Ferrari with beige leather upholstery was inviting the local grunge merchants to either take it for a joy ride or just leave it where it was and vandalize it. But a second later, a svelte figure in a dark-gray glam Goth suit stepped out on the sidewalk.

Ida’s voice broke in again. “Code Blue looking better than my dreams.”

He had a full head of messy black hair with a hint of silver that stayed perfectly in place even though huge gusts of wind were making litter roil up the street. He gazed up at the facade of the GWI building. We all leapt back out of his view, except for Lisa Karlovsky, our big blond volunteer coordinator, who smiled and waved down at him. Then she turned her head upward and laughed. “Guess who else is hanging out the window upstairs?”

“Not Ash?” said Cleo.

We all shoved and jostled and pushed ourselves out through the window frame to get a look at Ash looking at Ian Trutch. She was leaning out above us, her glasses dangling from her hand, her dark eyes wide.

“That,” said Lisa, “is the first time I have ever seen her without those bottle bottoms covering her face.”

“We should hold a press conference,” said Cleo.

Ash, otherwise known as Aishwarya Patel, was our entire accounting department. Thin and sallow, of undetermined age and wearing a dull black frump suit intended to be a power suit, Ash seemed to think she was the most important person in our organization because the donation money was processed by her. She was allergic to the human race and ate her daily lunch of sour grapes at her desk in her office. Her door was always closed. All communication from Ash came through e-mail directives, usually capital letters, which came across like cyber-screaming. Even though her office was upstairs, right next to the lunchroom, where all of us made at least ten stops a day at the fridge full of goodies, Ash found it too socially challenging to get up and walk those few feet into the lunchroom to tell us anything in person, to give us, for example, her last earth-shaking directive, TO ALL OFFICE STAFF: DO NOT STIR COFFEE THEN PUT WET SPOON BACK IN SUGAR BOWL. LUMPS FORM.

And I heard that Jake, in a rare moment of unprofessionalism, sent an e-mail back to Ash, “Well, hey, Ash, sweetheart, that’s life. LUMPS FORM.”

Ian Trutch frowned up at all of us, then walked toward the main entrance.

Ida’s voice burst in. “Code Blue advancing. Code Blue advancing…oh baby…”

We all pulled ourselves back into the room.

“So that’s the big mucky-muck, eh? The new CEO. Like them apples,” said Lisa.

“It’s him,” said Cleo. “And thank goodness for that. Can’t have a morning’s makeup wasted.”

Fran, the secretary, said, “He’s had work. I’d put money on it.” Since her husband had dumped her and her three children for Silicon Chick, Fran had been wearing her forty-nine years, crow’s feet, double chin, limp gray hair and extra hip-padding with pride. Her favorite game these days was Spot The Cosmetic Surgery. “He’s a careful piece of work, I’ll bet. Expensive work.”

“Fran.” Cleo laughed. “He’s only in his thirties. Why would he need work?”

“Wake up, sister. This is the Age of Perfection. And perfection can be bought,” she snorted. “But I just want to add the footnote that I’d let this one warm my bed on a cold night, nose job and all, just as long as he’s out of it by morning.”

I was reserving judgment. I got myself a cup of coffee and went back into my office to think about what I’d just seen. Ian Trutch was everything we were not. He was trouble in a fancy package. And it was going to be very bad for our image to have a CEO who whizzed around town in a black Ferrari. But then the frisson of nervousness kicked in and for the next few minutes I fantasized about meeting the enemy halfway and riding around in a fast car with an even faster man. Something I’d never done.

The ringing phone interrupted my reverie. I picked it up and said, “Dinah Nichols.”

The voice on the other end was incoherent. It took me a minute to realize it was Joey. He was crying and stuttering.

I said, “Joey, Joey, calm down. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

All I could make out was “hoia…coy…hoia…glop…oodle” between the gasps and the tears.

I tried again. “What’s happened? Get a grip on yourself.”

“It’s too horrible….” sobbed Joey.

“Just take a few deep breaths then tell me slowly.”

There was a wet silence and then he started. “You know I walk dogs for Mrs. Pritchard-Wallace out near Point Grey?”

“Yeah?”

One of Joey’s filler jobs.

“Not anymore.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Well, early this morning I was taking Jules and Pompadour, Mrs. PW’s miniature poodles, for a walk along by the golf course, when this thing, this creature from Hell comes streaking out of nowhere, snatches Pompadour in its jaws then streaks away. Nothing left but Pompy’s diamond collar. It was a wolf. I’m sure it was a wolf.”

“It was probably a coyote.”

“You’re kidding me, Dinah.”

“Was it sort of a yellowish color?”

“Yes, my God, it was. How did you know?”

“Don’t you read the news?”

“Variety. I read Variety. You know that. I haven’t got time for global disaster.”

“Jeez, Joey. They figure there must be at least two thousand coyotes in and around town. They can’t catch them because they’re just too smart. I’d heard about them, I’d just never had a firsthand account. Wow.”

“Wow is right. Mrs. PW’s going to have hysterics. She doesn’t know yet. She’s out getting her facade renovated.”

“Her what?”

“Getting her face stripped and varnished. A peeling and a facial, darling.”

“Oh.”

“And I’m shaking all over. I’m going to have a Scotch right now.”

“Joey. At nine forty-five in the morning?”

“It’s not every day somebody’s thousand-dollar poochie gets to be part of the urban wildlife food chain.”

“God, yeah. Listen, Joey, you don’t want to get the coyotes used to a diet of expensive house pets. It might build their expectations. You know? Like potato chips? Once you’ve had one, you just can’t stop. So don’t encourage them…careful where you walk your dogs. Listen, speaking of predators and prey, the big boss from the East just blew in driving a Ferrari and I’m really worried, I’ve heard he’s completely insensitive to people’s feelings. He decimated the last office he was in and then some. And I’m told that there may be a total massacre in this office, too…”

It would have been better if I hadn’t looked up at all.

“Ooops…gotta go.” I slammed down the phone.

He, Mr. Silent Shoe Soles, was standing in my open doorway, staring at me. The CEO. He was so luscious-looking in real life that I could hardly swallow.