Speechless (15 page)

“Well, okay.”

“I’ll call you!”

He won’t call.

The phone is ringing but I decide to let voice mail take care of business. My shoes are propped on the desk and I’m savoring the last morsel of a chocolate bar. It’s the first I’ve allowed myself in two weeks and I resent the intrusion. Who could blame me for the indulgence, given my recent trauma? The phone rings again a few minutes later and my professionalism wins out.

“Libby McIssac.”

“Hi, Libby, it’s Janet from the Legislative Library. I’ve solved your mystery.”

“Thank you so much, Janet. I’ve almost finished the speech and there’s a perfect spot for the Minister to recite this poem.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Something in her tone tells me there’s a rewrite ahead of me. “The lines she gave you aren’t from a poem.”

“No? What are they from?”

“A song, actually.”

“A song? Well, that could work.”

“Probably not for the Opera Company: it’s by Sawdust.”

“Not the brother/sister duo from the ’70s?”

“Allow me,” Janet begins: “As a girl I listened to the radio, Belting out my favorite songs…. I think they knew I sang along, It made them smile…”

“It’s schmaltzy, but pleasant enough,” I say. “And the Minister likes it.”

“I’m just getting started: Every la-la-la, every Dosie-do-do, sunshine… Maybe you’re right, Libby—it is perfect for the Opera Company.”

“Okay, I get your point.”

But Janet is enjoying herself too much to stop: “Every ting-a-ding-ding, the bells are starting to ring….”

“All right, already!” She sneaks in a swooping “Good times” before I cut her off. “Look, how was I to know? Sawdust was a ’70s band. I was like, five.”

“Every dosie-do-do…”

“Janet, librarians are supposed to be quiet and shy.”

“I’ll fax over the lyric sheet so the whole audience can sing along.”

I hear one last wo-wo-wo before the line goes dead.

“A
s promised!” I announce dramatically to the shadowy form behind Margo’s desk.

It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the gloom. No wonder she prefers to raid my stash of snacks—she’d need night-vision goggles to find her own in here. Using the glow from the computer monitor to guide me to her desk, I present the speech for the Opera Company with a bow and a flourish.

“It took me most of the weekend, but I think the Minister is going to be pleased,” I say. I actually finished in time to meet Emma for a late lunch on Saturday, but I’m not about to share that with the Dungeon Master.

Ignoring both speech and amateur dramatics, Margo looks up from her computer.

“The Minister has hired a private political consultant who’s flying in from London tomorrow to advise all of you on how to improve our image.”

I’m not fooled by her apparent nonchalance. There’s a chocolate chip cookie sitting uneaten on her desk—she’s plenty
worried. I just hope the consultant is a guy: we could use some testosterone on the executive team.

“Is there a reason you’re still here, Libby?”

“Yes, actually. The speech…?”

“What speech?”

“The one I just put on your desk—for the Opera Company?”

She looks down at the speech as though wondering how it got there.

“Oh, that. I’ll look at it when I have the time.”

I beat a hasty retreat before she snaps out of her daze and questions me about the state of the reference shelf. On the way back to my desk, I bump into Bill and ask if he’s heard the news about the new consultant.

“Yeah, I heard, all right. It’s Richard Neale. I can’t believe she’s hiring that arrogant son of a bitch.”

“You know him?”

“He’s a friend of the Clearys’ and I’ve driven him around when he’s been in town. Thinks he’s better than the rest of us just because of that posh British accent. It’s phony, if you ask me. He’s from Yorkshire, for God’s sake—farm country—but he acts like he was to the manor born.”

“A real snob, huh?”

“Take it from me, Libby, the man’s a pain in the arse.”

I’m waiting by the microwave for my soup to heat up when I learn that the Ego has landed. Two female admin staff spill into the kitchen, abuzz with the news.

“Who was
that?
” one asks, fanning herself with a Lean Cuisine box.

“I don’t know, but I’d sure like to! What a hunk! And that accent!” The woman extends her hand to her friend in an imitation of Richard: “Good Aufternoon. That’s an absolutely
charming
jumper you have on.”

Please. So the man has an accent and a little polish. Big deal. In my experience, the private sector consultants are always
smooth. They arrive wearing expensive navy-blue suits and expressions of bemused tolerance— Big Business riding into town to clean up the Bungling Bureaucracy. Yet, time and again I’ve watched them crumble under the red tape, delays and mixed messages of government. The strain begins to show when the suits are replaced by bad casual wear. Their hours get shorter, their meetings get longer and all thoughts of reforming us vanish. By the time they’re fully assimilated, you couldn’t pick them out of a crowd of civil servants, except for their bulging wallets. I give this guy six weeks.

The women’s twittering is making my head ache so I collect my soup and head down the hall to dine in the relative peace of my cubicle. Rounding a corner, I nearly run into Margo, who’s leading a very tall, well-built man in a navy suit toward the boardroom. This must be Richard Neale but he doesn’t seem like such hot stuff to me. Margo hurries past without a glance, but Richard, who accidentally clips me in the shoulder, stops to apologize.

“I’m dreadfully sorry,” he says, squeezing my arm gently before rushing after Margo.

Whoa! The hairs on my arms are all standing at attention and as I turn to watch Richard’s broad shoulders disappear into the boardroom, I feel my brain roll over, kick a few times and die. Surely Bill is mistaken about this guy; he seems perfectly delightful. But perhaps a fatal blast of pheromones has disengaged my usually stellar capacity for reasoning.

Back at my desk, I’m very much aware of Richard’s presence in the boardroom nearby. The Minister is giggling and even Margo’s voice has a breathless quality. There’s also a constant stream of women passing my cubicle to stroll by the boardroom. Evidently, the pheromones have already penetrated the building’s ventilation system.

“How can you sit there so calmly?” Laurie says, peeking around my partition. The fast, high tone of her voice betrays that she too has been affected by Richard’s magic—and this is a woman who is so happily married I usually want to slap her.

“Don’t tell me you’re on your way past the boardroom too?”

“You bet I am. Richard is hot! Haven’t you met him yet?”

“Well, we haven’t been formally introduced, but I’ve seen him.”

“And…?”

“And I suppose he’s attractive enough.”

“Playing it cool, huh? Well, then I won’t bother to share what I’ve learned about him.”

I pull a Mars bar out of my drawer and surrender half of it to her. “Spill it, sister.”

Laurie laughs and perches on the corner of my desk and tells me that Richard is divorced, currently single and living in Chelsea, an upscale London neighborhood. Although he’s a renowned political consultant, the stock market is behind his great wealth. He received a modest inheritance as a teen and parlayed it into a small fortune by the time he was twenty-five. He met Mrs. Cleary and her husband, Julian, at an alumni event at Cambridge and despite the difference in their ages, they’ve been close friends ever since. The Minister is particularly fond of him.

“So,” Laurie concludes, “I’m heading down to the coffee machine. Care to join me?”

From the coffee machine, one can enjoy an unobstructed view into the boardroom. “I could use a coffee.”

I steal a good look at Richard as we pass the open door. His suit looks expensive, as does his shirt and tie, but when my eyes slide south, I’m surprised to discover that he’s wearing fancy, fringed loafers with a pointy toe.

“Did you check out the shoes?” I whisper to Laurie when we reach the coffee machine. “He’s wearing party pumps.”

“Maybe that’s the height of fashion in London.”

“Or maybe it’s a big mistake.”

“Are you saying you’d reject him on the basis of his footwear?” Laurie asks.

“I’m saying he’ll need the services of a friendly native to help him get dressed in the morning.”

“It looks like Mrs. Cleary is already applying for that position.” Laurie nods in the direction of the boardroom where the Minister is currently straightening Richard’s tie. “Not that Richard seems to mind,” she adds.

“He’s probably just being polite,” I say. “Do you think he realizes how attractive he is to women?”

“I’d say he’s pretty confident of his appeal, yes.”

“He’s awfully manly for a civilized Brit. Maybe he was blessed with two Y chromosomes.”

“Well, if you ask me, two Y’s spell trouble.”

What’s a little excessive masculinity between colleagues? I could help him find more constructive uses for that testosterone.

Richard has rearranged the furniture in his office so that his desk now faces the door. I know this because I’ve been devising lame excuses to stroll down the hall past his office. For example, I’m catching up on my photocopying, what with the copy room being near his office. I also take the long way round to the washroom and back. It’s pathetic, but I’m in good company: who knew so many women worked in the building?

Ashamed, I consult with my self-help library and discover a volume entitled,
Flirt Now, Marry Later.
It confirms that the parade is a time-honored courtship ritual and offers the following guidelines:

• Preen before setting off; fluff hair and apply lipstick;
  
• Invent feasible excuse for mission;
  
• Walk briskly and with purpose toward destination;
  
• Look straight ahead, shoulders back, hips swaying;
  
• Smile ever so slightly so as to look caught up in fascinating life, yet still attainable.
  

If I tried all that, I’d blow a circuit, but fortunately, even my feeble attempts are generating good results: I’m almost certain Richard looks up as I’m passing and tracks me with his eyes. The book doesn’t indicate whether it’s allowable to laugh once you’re out of sight, but I do— I can’t take the game that seri
ously. Just the same, I find myself pondering the relative merits of thong underwear. If he’s going to monitor my backside, perhaps I should give him less to look at. On the other hand, given my expanding girth, I’m better off with something more binding.

I’m still tabulating the pros and cons of various undergarments when I overhear Richard’s deep voice greeting our receptionist on the other side of my partition:

“Good morning, Nancy. Where might I get a decent cup of tea around here?”

“I’m fine, thanks!” Nancy replies, before adding, “I love tea.”

What is it about Richard that is reducing all of the women—and some of the men—on our floor to idiocy? I’d love to set up a few cameras around the office to study the phenomenon—maybe do a little in-house reality television show.

The phone rings, shattering my fantasy.

“Hi, Libby, it’s Tim.”

For the first time in three days, all thoughts of Richard have vanished from my head. My heart starts pounding. I’m a woman of simple tastes after all. Why waste a moment’s thought on an unattainable businessman when a very pleasant high-school music teacher is actually on the line?

Tim apologizes again for the Porta Potti incident and explains that the girls mistakenly believed one of their own pals to be in the potty when they jammed the latch. It was just a harmless joke that got out of hand because they forgot to come back for her, he says. I don’t believe this for a second, but why dispel his kindhearted delusions? Instead, I graciously accept his apology. And when he invites me to join him for a movie, I happily agree.

After hanging up, my concentration immediately improves and I take full advantage by tackling one of the two new speeches the Minister has assigned. I haven’t been able to focus since Richard’s arrival. At checkout time, I take the shortest
route to the elevator. I don’t give Richard a thought all evening and even forget to mention his arrival to Lola when she calls to complain that Michael canceled dinner plans at the last minute again. For a change, I’m blissfully content as I climb into bed. My second date with Tim is going to be terrific. I will carry cologne in my purse, though, just in case.

I awaken with a vague sense of guilt. Then my dream about Richard comes flooding back to me. I let the man have his way with me. No, worse, I had my way with him. The details are sketchy, but clothes were flying and he was talking dirty to me with that lovely English accent. The sex, if I may say, was incredible.

I go heavy on the cold water in the shower to erase the feeling and am soon able to appreciate just how uncomfortable the boardroom table would be for a real life shagging. I’m not eighteen anymore and Richard and I are both very tall. And how about those party pumps? I must cleanse my mind of illicit thoughts of Richard and replace them with images of Tim. Tim is just as handsome as Richard and his footwear—with the exception of the sports sock episode at the Governor General’s—is far superior.

A trip to the photocopier is my first priority upon reaching the office, despite my good intentions. I still haven’t been formally introduced to Richard. Admittedly, the opportunities have been few because the Minister and Margo keep him in back-to-back meetings. Still, you’d think they’d stop by my cubicle and make an introduction. Or you’d think he’d make an effort himself. He may even be going out of his way
not
to notice me. Given my frequent visits to the Xerox machine, he probably has me pegged as the office lackey and Bill did say he’s a snob.

I manage to live through the day without seeing him. Laurie says the Minister has taken him to a policy seminar. At least it leaves me free to focus on my other speech and by 6:00 p.m.
I’m able to drop both of them on Margo’s desk. I have just enough time to hit the ladies’ room to prep for my date and take one last, slow pass by Richard’s office on my way out to see if he’s returned. I made quite an effort with my appearance today and I’d like Richard to benefit from Tim’s good fortune.