Hardly Working (6 page)

“Porphyria, Dinah? The disease of vampires? Good lord, dear, the only vampire in our family was Uncle Fred who worked for the Internal Revenue.”

“Now, Mom. I need to know now. Before something happens to one or the other of us.”

My mother flashed me a startled look. She sat very still for what seemed like an eternity. I'll always remember the moment, because it could have gone either way and I would
be a different sort of person for it today, wouldn't I? White sails slid past the Yacht Club window and sliced through the glistening windy October ocean.

Slowly, my mother started to move. She reached down for her bag, pulled out a pen and piece of paper, wrote something down, then offered it to me. “This may be out of date but I don't think so, if what I've heard through the grapevine is true. I don't know if you ever met Rupert Doyle, rather a long time ago…”

I had a memory of a tall lanky ecstatic man, hair like tiny black bedsprings, bouncing me on his shoulders. I recalled storytelling after some big meals, and hearing from my room later the waves of hysterical adult laughter rising up to me until I drifted off to sleep. He told stories of exotic places where the landscape was in brighter warmer colors and people died suddenly and dramatically.

I said, “When I was little. He was often over at the house, I think.”

“Yes. That's right. He might be able to help you. That's all I'm going to say on the subject. You do what you like. But after this moment, I don't want to hear another word about it for as long as I live. Do you understand, Dinah? Not one word.”

Well, happy, happy birthday.

 

The words scribbled on the piece of paper were
Rupert Doyle, Eldorado Hotel.

That night, at home, I Googled Rupert Doyle. The situation was looking good. Up came a number of Web sites listing documentaries that Rupert Doyle had produced, some of them award winners. War zones, famine zones, and sometimes, royal sex scandal zones. Where there was disaster, hunger en masse, or a violent uprising, Rupert Doyle was there getting it on videotape for posterity. There was even a photo. It looked like the man I remembered, but twenty-five years older.

At work I was puffed up with pride just thinking about Rupert Doyle. I was already a taller, smarter, longer-thighed person for having his name written on that little slip of paper. I couldn't wait to tell Thomas about it. Around the office, I managed to drop the name “Rupert Doyle” into at least three work-focused conversations that had nothing to do whatsoever with the kind of thing Rupert Doyle was involved with, like political documentaries about South America or Africa or the UK.

While Jake was talking about Shelter Recycling Project funds, I really pushed my luck and said, “You know, perhaps we could get Rupert Doyle, an old family friend of mine, to document the Shelter Recycling Project. I'm sure he'd do it if I asked him.”

Everyone looked at me as if to say, “Enough with this Doyle guy already, Dinah.”

Then Ian Trutch said, “Rupert Who?”

And I sort of stammered and said, “Rupert Doyle's a very important person, a film producer.”

“Never heard of him,” said Ian Trutch.

So I blathered on, “Well, he's an important person. He's like…ah…Michael Moore. Would you say no to Michael Moore if he offered to come along and do a short for your organization? No, you wouldn't. It's about the same thing.” I was getting red in the face by then, and feeling quite small.

Wednesday

The portico of the Eldorado Hotel was framed in ceramic tile that must have once been white but was now stained yellow. The glass in its doorway was smudged with a month's worth of dirty handprints. Inside, the air smelled of smoke, stale beer and Lysol. The sound of peppery upbeat music shuddered through the whole hotel. Behind a cramped reception desk with an old bronze grate, at the start of the cor
ridor, a man with a papery thin skin poked letters into numbered slots. I cleared my throat and said, “Excuse me, I'm looking for Rupert Doyle. I was told he had a room here.” The man jerked his head toward the music and said, “You'll find him in the lounge.” Then he leaned forward, about to become confidential. His face crinkled up like an accordion and he added, “Drinking with the Cubans.”

I hesitated then hurried down the corridor. When I stepped into the lounge, I felt as though I were inside a large streaky bell pepper. The walls were a wet dark red with the old wooden siding painted green and yellow. A mud-colored linoleum dance floor, stippled by a million stiletto heels, took up the centre of the lounge. A chubby middle-aged couple moved across it to a salsa rhythm, seeing only each other.

Up at the bar, a huge man was hunched in conversation with a short fat dark man. The tall man had the Rupert Doyle hair I remembered except that it was completely silver and he had a silver three-day growth of beard to match. His tall powerful bearlike body was almost exactly the same except for a slight thickening through the waist and chest. Otherwise, he was the same.

I approached him uncertainly. “Rupert Doyle?”

He swung around, saw me and said, “Christ.”

Now he was frowning.

“Mr. Doyle?”

“Do I know you?” He was cautious.

“Sort of,” I replied.

He was handsome. One of what I call the electric men. You can see ideas sparking in their eyes, the life force coursing through their bodies. As if they'd been given a double dose of energy right at the start. There was still a remnant of that old ecstasy in his face, but it had been tested over the years and now was worn down to vague contentment.

I didn't give him a chance to blow it.

I came right out with it.

I said, “I'm Marjory Nichol's daughter. My mother said I'd find you here.”

He put his hand on his heart. “Oh Jesus.” Then he put his hand to his head. “Christ. What a shock. That explains it. You scared the life out of me.”

“I did?”

“Just give me a second. Now. Marjory Nichols. Hell. You're…? Goddamn. You're…uh…wait a minute…Diane.”

“Dinah. You used to come round to our house years ago.”

“Well, sure I did. Of course I did. Stand back and let me look at you. How about that. So, well… How about that? Goddamn. You're Marjory's daughter.”

“Yes, I am.”

“How is your mom, anyway? How's Marjory. I haven't seen her in ages. I keep meaning to get in touch but life has a way of conspiring against old friendships….”

“Fine. She's fine.”

“I keep meaning to get in touch but I'm often on the move. You know, I caught her on TV, that interview she did on the dying oceans for the BBC, a couple of years back. She sure is something. I was about to pick up the phone but as usual was interrupted by a business call. I'm rarely in the country these days and when I am, it's all work.”

“She's often on the move too so…”

“Yes, right, well, good, Marjory's daughter. Unbelievable how time flies. You were just a little kid the last time I saw you….”

Then I blurted it out. No formalities. “I made her tell me. How to find you. You know? She knew how badly I wanted to meet my father. And well, now, here we are.”

Rupert Doyle's eyes opened a little wider and took on the shape of half-moons as he peered. He took a step backward and held up his hands as if he were pushing me away. “Nooo,” he exhaled. “No, no. Just a minute now. You're making a big mistake.”

I
was devastated. My first thought was, What's so horrendous about me that you don't want to admit that I'm your daughter? A minidepression was starting to form in me, like a tiny whirlwind building into a hurricane, with a pinch of pure rage tossed in for good measure.

I wanted to run crying to Thomas, make one of my emergency calls to him.

But Rupert Doyle read my expression right away. Total dejection edged with fury. He leapt in to correct himself. “No, no, please, don't misunderstand. It's not the way you think…you think I'm your father? Is that it?”

I nodded.

“I'm not your father…Dinah.”

I shook my head.

“I may have a few kids scattered around the world for all I know, but you're certainly not one of them. Rest easy in the knowledge.”

I couldn't bring myself to look him in the eye.

“That's not to say I wouldn't be proud to be your father. But I'm not him. You're too young to know about it but I can't tell you how many men, myself included, wanted your mother to be the mother of their children. That woman was something special. Imagine she still is. Marjory Nichols had us all hopping like fools for the love of her. Damn her anyway.”

I started to frown and then to laugh. He laughed, too, and suddenly my mother's powers of attraction gave us common ground, something to grab on to, to make us old friends, as though he had been a constant visitor to the house for the last twenty-five years.

He rubbed his face vigorously with both hands, like someone waking from a long sleep. He seemed about to say something but his words were replaced with a frustrated sigh. Until he finally said, “Listen. I
do
know who your father is.”

I gave my own huge sigh of relief.

He smiled. “Your mother probably didn't want to have anything to do with it. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“She can be a very stubborn woman.” His expression was odd, his blue eyes luminous.

“You're telling
me.
I mean, we're talking about my own father and I'm not allowed to know anything about him. I'm only just realizing now how pissed off I've been with her for not telling me about him. Information is advancement, evolution. She's not being very scientific.”

Rupert Doyle chuckled. “Here, Dinah. Sit down.” He pointed to the scarred black bar stool. “Can I order you something? A beer?”

“A coffee…” But then I saw the glass pot on the hotplate behind the bar, untouched brew with a scummy encrusted high tide line, so I accepted a soda water.

Rupert Doyle said, “I can imagine how your mother
probably feels about this and I don't want to be responsible for starting a family war. They're the worst. So you need to go carefully with this one. Your father is what I'd call a…difficult character…apart from the fact that he's volatile…he has…he
had
the power to take people places where they didn't always want to go.”

“Who is he? Tell me something about him.”

He stroked his chin. “Yeah…well, now. Let me think about this. I can do better than tell you about him. I can introduce you to him.”

“He's here? In Vancouver?”

“Sure is. I'm just trying to figure out the best way to go about this.”

“Why? Is there a problem?”

“We really did not part as the best of friends.” Rupert shook his head and let a small bitter laugh escape.

“Well, I'm not too secure about this whole thing myself. You're scaring me a bit.”

“Oh, no…don't take this the wrong way…”

“Mr. Doyle…”

“Rupert.”

“Rupert. I'd like to get a glimpse of him first. From a distance, you know? Not have to commit myself. Without him knowing anything about me.”

“Sure. Of course, Dinah. In the interests of not prejudicing your opinion, I can see how you'd want to take your time before you decide whether or not you really want to get to know the man. You might take one look and decide it's better not to. He might not want to have anything to do with you. Or me.” He laughed again.

“What's the problem?” I was picturing my mother with some impossible kind of man. A married politician? Another mad scientist? “Does he have a high-profile job or something? Would this create a scandal for him?”

“No, no.”

“Or is he some kind of criminal?”

Rupert Doyle frowned then bit his lip. “There have been accusations, and he has felt like a criminal at times, but no. Or rather, it would all depend on who you asked. No, he's not a criminal although he has been accused of being one.”

“I don't understand.”

“Your father is a representative from a distinct moment in history. An icon in some ways. Not an easy history, not at all. I would say that the very fact he's alive implicates him. Or so he would see it. You may have the chance to find out about it as you get to know him. If you decided you want to get to know him. But I think the person to give you all this information is your father himself. You need to hear the story from the horse's mouth, as it were.”

I shook my head.

What was he talking about? I was as unenlightened as ever with all his beating around the bush. “Okay. So. Now. What's his name and where do I find him?”

“You can find…just a second, Dinah.”

The man with the collapsed face from the front desk was standing in the doorway signaling to Rupert.

Rupert held up an authoritative palm to him. “Yeah, yeah, I'm coming.” He turned back to me. “Listen, Dinah. Let's do it this way, for the sake of Auld Lang Syne. And then we can catch up. I'd really like to catch up on your mother, too.”

My face must have twisted a little. My expression made him add quickly, “And you, of course. Hell, I remember you when you were just a little—”

The front desk man pointed his thumb toward the street, and said loudly, “Cab's here.”

Rupert said, “Look, we can…hell, I gotta go…got a production meeting at…” He looked at his watch and grimaced. “Christ. It started five minutes ago.” He slapped some money on the counter and started toward the door. I hurried along after him. His last words before he was out the
door were, “You meet me here at seven Friday night and I'll take you there myself. You have a car?”

I nodded.

“Great. Wouldn't mind seeing the old
picaro
again myself.”

 

I idly sharpened pencils. Ian Trutch was locked up with Ash. There were fleeting glimpses of him and whiffs of his aftershave hanging on the air, but that was all. Ash was looking delirious behind her thick lenses. She'd taken the clips out of her hair and let it down.

Penelope was declaring all-out war on me. It's amazing what a total lack of carnal knowledge, of real sex, can do to a person. I mean, at least if the rest of us weren't actually
having
sex, we still had our experiences and memories to fall back on, but Penelope… Penelope was beginning to show the mental strain that comes with ITD—Incoming Testosterone Deficit.

She had the war drums going strong when we got on to the topic of funds for AIDS awareness and sex education. She had a litany of sexual terrorism tales, nasty little stories on hand to make her case for chastity. Poor Lisa, who was genetically predisposed to being nice to everyone, to her own detriment, got stuck in the middle.

Penelope smoothed down her calf-length black skirt and said, “Did you know, Lisa, that the introduction of sex education at too early an age has been known to cause trauma in adolescents? It's been documented.”

I smoothed my red leather skirt and said, “Did you know, Lisa, that too much
pregnancy
at an early age has been known to cause trauma in adolescents?”

“Ah, jeez…ah, c'mon, you two. Cut this out.” Lisa, on the edge of despair, looked back and forth between the two of us, imploring.

Penelope continued to inform Lisa. “Some schools have grade-schoolers practice putting condoms on the fingers of
their classmates. What a disgusting thing to do to children. Now, in my opinion, that is exactly like telling a nine-year-old to go out and have sex.”

I looked Penelope straight in the eye, “Yes, but the message here is
safe
sex, Penelope, safe sex.”

“Well, I'm sure you'd know all about it, Dinah, given your long and varied experience in the field,” said Penelope.

Cleo arrived just before I was about to grab Penelope by the hair and knock some sense into her. Cleo pulled me by the arm toward my office, calling out to the others, “We're going for lunch.” And then she whispered to me, “I heard all that. It would be so much easier if we were at high school and Penelope had just called you a slut outright. You know? Then you could just corner her in the girls' bathroom, hold her head down in the toilet bowl and flush.”

“And flush. And flush,” I agreed.

 

Whenever Cleo dragged me to lunch like that, it meant two things.

Hunger.

And she was seeing somebody new.

When she wanted to talk about her private life she refused to go to a restaurant because she was afraid somebody would overhear. And for good reason. Cleo waded indiscriminately through the tides of men who washed up on her shores. Married, committed, or fit to be legally committed, the men that Cleo chose were safely designed for dumping when she grew tired of them, poor guys. But she had a special fondness for the high-profile married type, and she was right to be cautious. The thing about dating high-profile married men is that you never know when a low-profile wife in the know could pop out of the bushes or the woodwork, ready to reduce you to a pulp.

But this day was a little different.

Cleo gave me just enough time to grab a cup of dishwater
in a paper cup and a cardboard-and-pink-mush sandwich, and then drove us both up to Queen Elizabeth Park. We sat down on a bench and admired the autumn colors of the maples and alders for a second or two, then I said, “Okay. Tell me all about him. What's he like?”

“You know all about him,” said Cleo.

“Somebody I know? Who?”

“Can't you guess?”

I didn't have to think very far back. I could feel a heaviness in my stomach and it wasn't just the bad sandwich. I shook my head. “Simon. It's Simon. Of course it's Simon. Oh, Cleo, you don't know what you're in for.”

But she didn't give me a chance to go on. She told me how warm he was and how beautiful, and that she couldn't get enough of him, that she loved younger men and that she hadn't slept because he'd kept her up all that night. I should have ruined her fun, right then and there, but I just kept my mouth shut because…well…I did more talking about living than actually doing the living itself, and I admired Cleo for being a doer.

When we got back from our so-called lunch, Lisa said, “Hey you guys. You know there's been another cougar sighting?”

Cleo raised her eyebrows.

“Yeah, this time in the Spanish Banks area. Don't know how the poor kitty got from Burnaby to Spanish Banks but they haven't caught him yet. Careful when you're out jogging, Dinah. He's on your side of town now and those big cats move fast, especially when they're feeling hungry and tetchy.”

The Tsadziki Pervert came on hot and heavy that week, too. I'd lost the whistle I was going to tie onto the phone. It had probably skidded under the furniture and I didn't feel like heaving around all those heavy Deco bureaus I'd inherited from my great-grandparents. Or facing all the other junk I'd find under there. Joey was always teasing me, saying, “Just because your furniture dates back to the nineteen-twenties
doesn't mean the junk you find under it should date back to the twenties as well.” The day I moved the furniture was going to be a revelation.

The Telephone Pervert Voice was now a regular feature of my evenings. “I want to come over,” it hissed, “and cover your thighs in taramasalata (Tuesday), hummus (Wednesday), tsadziki (Thursday), then lick it all off.” I mean, the guy was really hooked on Greek. And my social life was so not-happening that his propositions were almost tempting.

Almost.

I had better distractions though, more solid ones. My gay neighbor, for example, was performing a very fine sideshow in his fishbowl of a living room. Tuesday night he decided to go through his usual body-building routine. Whatever it was that weighed on his mind, it had him worked into such a state that I wanted to run over there and say, “C'mon now. Out with it. Stop bottling it all up. Let me give you the number of my therapist.” Because he really seemed troubled and I guess the workout was a good way of keeping his mind off the problem. At times his expression seemed almost tortured it was so serious. While he hefted and pulled and pushed and sweated, I watched and tried to ignore the little thrum of longing in my solar plexus.

The next night, Wednesday, his partner was there for dinner. My neighbor had placed fat white candles around the room, and after dinner he and his friend took their drinks over to the brown leather couch, where they began to have an intense conversation.

I wondered if lip-reading courses were given anywhere in town.

And then the guest stopped talking and my neighbor grabbed the other man and gave him a long tight hug. He had such a tender expression on his face that watching them brought tears to my eyes.

The next night, strange things were going on. My neigh
bor had guests but they weren't human. I counted five black cats in his living room, skittering around, climbing up the curtains, scratching the furniture. My neighbor didn't seem too concerned about the damage. He picked each cat up in turn, stroked gently, rubbed their ears until they were calm, rolled them onto their backs and stroked their bellies, then held their paws and played with them. In that moment, I wanted to be a black cat, too.

Friday