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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.
