Hardly Working

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.