Hardly Working (20 page)

“So, Dinah. How's it going? With you and Ian.”

I shrugged. “It's still going, I guess. I haven't seen a lot of him lately. He's been pretty busy with company business, and overseeing the construction of that new office.”

“Yeah. The Garden of Eden. You going to apply for the job of Eve?”

I raised my eyebrows.

Cleo used a lecherous tone. “Personal Assistant?”

“You must be joking, Cleo. I really can't picture me as his personal slave. But I'm not so sure about Penelope. I've seen the way she sucks up to him. I'll bet she's applied.”

“Well…I did happen to overhear her mention something about it to Lisa in the coffee room.”

“Figures.” I took a huge hard bite of my black forest cake.

Cleo became serious. “What are we going to do if we lose our jobs, Dinah? I don't want to move back to Montreal. I like it out here.”

I licked the cream off my finger. “Lisa says she's going to open a business if she loses this job. Maybe she'll hire us.”

“Just as well Lisa isn't here. She's been acting a little strangely. I'll bet she's started looking for another one.”

“You think? I have to say, Lisa's head is definitely somewhere else. I almost get the feeling she doesn't want to be around us.”

“Forget about her. The other thing I want to know is, what are we going to do without Hamish Robertson?”

“We could tell Jake we've found him and have his pledge. Just to buy time,” I offered.

“How are we going to do that?” Cleo was looking intently at me now, worried.

I popped the last bite of cake into my mouth. “I have an idea.”

Wednesday

Argentina was on my mind as I drove toward my tango lesson. Ian had come into my office and caught me with the
Buenos Aires Herald
up on my computer screen.

“Vacation, Dinah?”

“It's my new obsession, Ian.”

“Is that right? Well, maybe you could spare some time to prepare the Space Centre's itinerary. I'd like it to be a special presentation, something that people will really remember.”

“Sure thing.”
If he only knew.

 

When I entered Los Tangueros, piano music trickled into the hallway. I tiptoed toward the main room and stood silently in the doorway. Hector, seated at the piano with his back to me, was playing another of his improvisations. Rhythmic, melancholy, the coolest of jazz harmonies sparking into something bolder then retreating to coolness. It was spirited, even funny in moments. I felt a strange surge of pride. It was as if I had a little mental camera in that mo
ment and was clicking a picture to remember it forever. Whatever else happened with Hector and me, this moment had to stay intact.

And then I interrupted it by allowing my purse to clatter to the floor. I took off my coat. He whirled around. “You are here then.”

“Hello, Hector.”

He reached out and took my hand. I tried to read its strength and direction and sensed that he was about to twirl me. When he did, I smiled.

He laughed. “I forgot to mention one little thing. It helps if you are telepathic with this dance.”

“I noticed that.”

He was already walking me across the floor, testing me.

“Last time. We didn't finish our conversation. You did not tell me your last name. I wondered. If your family is from Buenos Aires, it might be a name that I know.”

“Just Dinah,” I said.

“You are being mysterious.”

“It suits the tango, I think.”

“Perhaps. Shall we work now?” He brought us to a standstill and said. “Show me now if you have learned this
caminata
in your bones.”

“Will you let me have some music to dance to this time? Maybe the ‘Scarlet Tango'?”

“You know my piece?”

I nodded.

“Not many know it.”

“It's a classic.”

“Ha,” he said, disbelieving. “If it is, then this is news to me.”

Like aiming a gun in the dark, I said, “You must have been away from your country for a very long time.”

“A lifetime. Maybe two.”

“Do you miss Buenos Aires?”

“It is dangerous to miss it. Now I think after this we will try an
ocho,
a figure eight. Without music.” Then he added playfully, “If you learn it properly, the music will be your reward at the end of the lesson. Or your punishment.” His eyes were shining.

I tried hard. Hector seemed less bullying with me. Toward the end of the lesson, he said, almost gently, “You are not doing so badly. There are some people who choose to remain beginners forever. They do not dare try even a
milonga,
but they refuse to give up. You…you are a natural….”

My heart beat a little faster when he said it.

“One day you will decide if you want to do
milongueros
style tango or
fantasia.
The first is one that you feel for yourself, for the pleasure of the dance.
Fantasia
is for show.”

“Is that what you danced?”

“I have danced every kind of tango. The tango is my language. And it was my family's language. My sister…” But the sentence vanished in midair and he said nothing else.

“Your sister?”

He had difficulty speaking. His throat had tightened and he made a slightly strangled sound. “My sister Alicia was a famous tango dancer. Fantasia. You remind me of her. I wanted to say this to you. There is something in your eyes, in your expressions that is just like her. It has been…haunting me.”

“Where is your sister? Is she here in Vancouver?”

I wanted to meet her, too. My aunt Alicia.

Hector leaned in close and said in a voice that chilled me to the bone, “You cannot meet her. She is gone.”

For the rest of the lesson, we were contained and mostly silent, concentrating on the dance to keep our other worries at bay.

Before going to bed that night, I called the Eldorado Hotel and left a message for Rupert Doyle. They told me he was still out of the country. Which was a pity because I badly needed to talk to him.

Thursday

Ian's face looked a little twitchy. “I'm calling this meeting to order. I want to address the volunteer situation today.”

There had been a few groups of occasional volunteers but lately, our steadiest had been Roly, the most obedient dogs-body our office had ever seen. And the Helium Sisters were in training, having pledged their services for the Space Centre event. Some people will do anything for a party.

“We want to discourage street people from donating their time. It's detrimental to Green World's image to have shaggy, unwashed derelicts wandering through our hallways.” Ian was looking directly at Lisa.

She looked daggers back at him. “If you're talking about Roly, he's not unwashed and he's a good volunteer. He's reliable and doesn't talk our ears off like some people I won't mention.”

“The girls are fine. The girls can stay,” said Ian.

I'll bet they can.

Jake suddenly spoke up. “Sorry, Ian. I'm not with you on this one. Volunteers are the backbone of Green World. You wouldn't remember this, because it was before your time, but I've worked for GWI for nineteen years, since its beginning. You know it was founded here in Vancouver, eh? You didn't? The Eastern branches opened later. Well, I can assure you that GWI was conceived and floated entirely by volunteers, people who
looked
like shaggy, unwashed derelicts.”

Ian shook his head. “Times have changed. This is the twenty-first century. Image is tantamount to success.”

“Whoa,” whispered Cleo, nudging me hard.

“Well, Lisa's our volunteer coordinator. What do you think, Lisa?” asked Jake. “You think we might be able to talk Roly into leaving his slicker at home and maybe getting…a trim?”

Lisa's face was pinched, like that of an indignant child. She
nodded slowly. “I'll talk to him about it but I'm not promising anything.”

A cruel smile caught one side of Ian's mouth. “Perhaps if the volunteer co-ordinator had a better sense of style herself, the level of volunteer staff might improve…which brings me to another point. I will be accepting new applications from other Green World branches. Some of you might want to consider a transfer. Another city can be a positive change. A little reshuffling allows for some fresh blood, fresh ideas.”

He was looking between Jake who began to twist the end of his mustache, and Cleo, who was making a low growling sound that only I could hear.

Ian hadn't finished. “Now, another matter. I notice some employees have not yet filled out their donation module. I'm expecting that to be done by next week. It will reflect poorly on any employee who decides to withhold their contribution. We are trying to set an example here. I've received Penelope's…oh, and Penelope, I want to take this opportunity to compliment you on the excellent job you've been doing in communications with the GWI Moscow office.” He addressed all of us now. “Apparently, Penelope's Russian is nearly flawless. Head office says everybody's very excited about the Space Centre event and they're very enthusiastic about you in particular, Penelope.”

And they weren't the only ones, I thought with panic. Ian was definitely trying it with her. He beamed like a schoolboy at Penelope and she basked in it.

By then, I was getting so many nudges from Cleo, I was going to have bruises on that side.

 

Was I rotten? We'll never know for sure.

When I asked Ian if he wanted to go over to the Island on the weekend and see where my mother lived, he answered, “Yes, it would be a good opportunity to talk about the documentary.”

Thomas would say that we know everything instinctively, if we care to, but we spend most of our lives denying our instincts for the sake of getting along with people.

Or getting laid.

Or trying to hang on to our jobs.

Saturday

We pulled into the wooded drive to the Nichols family estate. The house dated back to 1850 and was a big rundown clapboard mansion on a granite foundation, wide porch all around, a part of which was a closed-in sunporch. The sunporch was never intended as a sunporch. It was an accident. One of the earlier Nichols, a great-great grandfather, had been a doctor, and one of the first men to experiment with X-ray. The porch had been his laboratory and the porch panes had been the glass X-ray plates of his patients' innards and skeletons. Later, the plates were scrubbed clean of all the old bones to allow for a clear view out to the ocean.

A fruit orchard, its tree trunks and limbs now gnarled and mossy with age, stretched up to the forest that separated the property from the road. Outbuildings had grown up like mushrooms since then, closing in and cluttering up what must have once been elegant grounds, well before my lifetime. Now there was a riding ring and stable to house the ponies, a dog kennel and run, an aviary where proud but wounded eagles looked cowed by their new situation, and many stray cats prowling about. Also scurrying around the grounds were a few stray young men and one young woman, students of marine biology, intent on pleasing Marjory Nichols and doing her every bidding, including all the menial labor that a spread like my mother's requires.

That day I was seeing the house through Ian's eyes, and I noticed how badly it could have used a coat of paint. It was weathered and gray, its bare boards showing through the
scabby remains of the white paint. Tiles were missing from the roof. Any attempt at a proper garden had been abandoned years ago so that the things that thrived on neglect, like the forest of rhododendrons, gorse, and arbutus trees, flourished and grew jungly. Thorny stretches of blackberry had taken over what had once been a green velvet lawn tennis court reaching to the ocean bank.

As we stepped out of the car, six dogs—two golden retrievers, a wire-haired dachshund, a Norwegian elkhound, a Scottish terrier, and a Rhodesian Ridgeback bounded up the drive, yelping and leaping all over us.

“Jesus, would you call off these dogs, Dinah?” yelled Ian, brushing at the muddy paw marks on his clean black pants.

I paid no attention. I was momentarily swallowed up in a nostalgic reunion. After all, given my relationship with the dogs and cats of my childhood, these dogs still held a place as my “great nieces and nephews.” I couldn't help myself. It was stronger than me.

I called out, “Goldie, Spritzer, Timmy, Budi, Luna, Jock.” I ruffled the fur and rumpled the ears on each and every dog and they greeted me back, a mess of long pink slavering tongues lapping around me, and slapping tails sending mud flying everywhere. I nodded at Ian to follow me. We went into the house, leaving the yelping entourage, except for Spritzer the dachshund and Jock the Scottie, behind us.

I took Ian by the hand and led him through the grand entrance of carved oak doors, the wood-paneled hallway with the fireplace, vaulted ceiling, and wide staircase, through the dark hallway to the living room. It was warm inside. A big fire had just been lit in the stone fireplace, and more wood paneling fluttered orange with the glowing light. It was in that room that I always had the strongest sense of my family's history, our own peculiar colonial aristocracy, made up of those wild-eyed Scottish and English remittance men and black sheep who, landed with a modest piece of frontier
property, were able to tame their wildest instincts long enough to coax the land into some kind of civilized shape and eventually squeeze money out of it.

In our living room were all the family prizes—the chintzes, the Persian carpets, the Queen Anne side tables, Sheffield Sterling silver samovars and tea services, the ebony and ivory sewing boxes, and mahjong sets, Chinoiserie of the late British Empire. I could tell right away that Ian approved of that room.

Until one of the rugs began to move.