Poles Apart (16 page)

“Deal.”

Just as he reached the fire-escape landing, a young woman’s voice drifted up from the alley.

“Hey, Lewis! I need you to work some magic on me before I go on. I really need you. Can you come down?”

Lewis looked at me, grinning. He shrugged in an “it’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it” kind of way.

“On my way down, Miss.”

I guess it made sense. Orlando was a perfect location for Mason Bennington’s
XY
enterprise. Think of all the well-off golfers. Think of all the well-off widowers. Think of all the well-off men, married or not. In light of Orlando’s demographics, there might not have been a better market in the U.S. for an exclusive club like
XY
. I just wished I wasn’t living right over top of it. I began to think of my apartment as Irony Manor. The idea that I was writing what had suddenly become the most popular feminist blog on the Internet, while resting my feet atop the so-called dance pole of the X-rated men’s club below, seemed
like irony on steroids. If you were to read such a scene in a novel, or see it in a movie, you’d call it far-fetched and never believe it. Yet there I was, sitting at my own kitchen table, working on a post for the
Eve of Equality
blog, soon to be seen by hundreds of thousands of readers, while the big nut pulsed in the floor below my feet. The words began to flow. Life is very strange, and certainly much stranger than fiction.

When I arrived at the hospital late the next morning, I spied Beverley and Dad walking the paths together. Kenny Jenkins was eyeing them from his regular spot. He didn’t look too happy. Then again, I’d never seen him look any other way. Kenny and I just watched Dad and Beverley for quite a long time. They were yakking away with one another and occasionally laughing at something the other had said. She was genuinely funny, so I was not surprised to see Dad laugh. But she might well have been manufacturing polite laughter in the face of my father’s twisted, archaic sense of humour. They made quite an unlikely pair. I didn’t approach them until they finally sat down on a bench.

I decided not to stay for lunch as I had another stop to make on the way home. The Orlando offices of the Pearson Group were located in a high-end building in the downtown business district. The understated logo of the company my mother led was emblazoned at the very top of the greenish-blue-tinged
glass skyscraper. The tower was not unlike those found in every other major city on the continent, except for the fact that my mother had a palatial corner office in this one.

“I’m here to see Evelyn Kane,” I said to the receptionist. The young, well-groomed man was seated behind a curved and streamlined marble-and-glass counter with a computer screen built into the surface. His name tag said Edmund.

“Do you have an appointment? I know she’s extremely busy today,” he said in a tone that lowered the temperature between us.

“No, I don’t have an appointment, but she told me to drop by anytime, and this seemed like the right time.”

“I see. I’m not certain that Mrs. Kane would agree,” he replied, pursing his lips.

“Did she ask you to refer to her as Mrs. Kane?” I asked.

“Only when she objected to the initial use of Ms. Kane. But that’s neither here nor there. The point is, she has a full slate of meetings this morning, and I doubt very much that we can fit you in.” He paused for a moment before adding, “What did you say your name was, again?”

“You hadn’t asked, but I’m Everett Kane.”

This might be kind of fun. I watched as his eyebrows arched, his spine stiffened, and the air around us seemed to warm up a few degrees.

“I see. Are you related to Mrs. Kane?” he asked, smiling now.

“You could say that. I’m her only son.”

“Well, then Mr. Kane, I’m sure we can accommodate your
request. If you could just have a seat over there, I’ll contact one of her assistants,” he said, now in full retreat.

“How many assistants does she have?”

“Well, quite a few. Just have a seat if you would. Can I get you a coffee, latte, espresso, cappuccino, tea, chai, or spiced cider while you’re waiting?”

“Could you do a Flaming Sambuca?” I said. He blanched. “I’m kidding. I’m just fine, but thank you, Edmund.”

I dropped into a sleek leather chair, a few paces away, while he worked his keypad and headset. He turned away from me and spoke in hushed tones, presumably to one of my mother’s multitude of assistants. In time, he swung around and resumed his original front-facing posture at his station. He caught my eye and held up three fingers before mouthing a silent countdown – three, two, one …

“Ev honey, why didn’t you tell me you were coming, I would have cleared my schedule,” my mother said as she swept out from the corridor beyond the reception counter. And “swept” was definitely the right word.

She was dressed in another perfectly tailored “don’t mess with me” suit of deep dark red. And when I say deep dark red, I mean it in the true hematological sense of the word. A blazing white blouse and some kind of white and red patterned scarf thingy led one’s eyes up to her very attractive face and perfectly coiffed hair. Red pumps – at least I think that’s what you would call these high-heeled power shoes – completed the ensemble.

“Hi Mom, or should I say
Mrs
. Kane?”

She sighed.

“Here we go. Is it a crime that I just prefer the terminology Mrs.? Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first woman prime minister insisted on it. Why can’t I?”

“Mom, it’s fine,” I replied. “It just seems a rather strange concession to patriarchy for a powerful woman
CEO
to make. Besides, Maggie Thatcher, for all her groundbreaking and trailblazing, was still a supremely conservative woman.”

“So, nothing wrong with that,” she replied. “And she was also smart, tough, and powerful, and took no shit from anyone, man or woman.”

“Yes, all true,” I agreed. “Okay, well that was fun.”

“Yes, it was. Let’s move on,” my mother said. “Come on in. I’ve got a few minutes before my world comes crashing down on me.”

She took my hand and we walked down the corridor. It took me back to when she’d grab my hand when crossing the street. As we sauntered by, Edmund tried and failed to pretend we weren’t there.

“Wow!” I exclaimed as we entered the largest and most beautiful office I’d ever seen. If you pushed the board table off to the side, I’m sure there was room for a regulation tennis court, or at least badminton. Her wraparound desk was at the far corner, next to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking downtown Orlando. I remembered we were on the forty-third floor.

“Breathtaking, Mom. Just amazing.”

We both sat down on a white leather couch resting off the perimeter of a white shag carpet. Not the brutal shag carpet of the seventies. This was more like sheep’s fleece or perhaps a polar bear pelt.

“Yes, it’s quite nice,” she conceded, taking in the expanse and luxury of her office. “I confess, I prefer my Toronto suite to this. But this will do while I’m down here.”

“Where are you staying while you’re down here?”

“I’ve got a condo in that building over there,” she said as she pointed to another glass tower a few blocks away. “It’s the penthouse.”

“Of course it’s the penthouse,” I said. “As it should be.”

“It’s very convenient. Sometimes I even walk to the office.”

“Settle down, Mom. It’s a good four blocks away,” I joked. “How else would you get here if not on foot?”

“There are many demands on my schedule,” she replied. “A car usually picks me up. It saves time.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Come!” she intoned.

Two middle-aged men stood there, looking unhappy and a little frightened.

“Gentlemen, meet my son, Everett. Ev, this is George and Liam from Finance.”

I nodded. Then they nodded and looked from my mother to me.

“You may speak freely in front of my son,” Mom said. “What’s up?”

“Sorry to interrupt, Evelyn, but we’ve hit a snag on the financing,” George said.

“Yeah, Citibank is dicking us around on the rate. They’ve bumped it up a half point,” Liam added.

“Jesus Christ, boys, we had an agreement with them,” my mother started off semi-calmly but through a clenched jaw. “I negotiated that rate and it was a done deal. The rest of our financing depends on it. We’re not paying another half point. That is not on. Just tell them to forget it. We had a deal.”

“That’s what we’ve been telling them,” George whined. “But they seem quite insistent.”

“Holy shit, you two, get your heads out of your asses and grow some balls, for Christ sakes,” she exploded. She had jumped to her feet and the two finance guys took a step backward and huddled closer together. “We had a fucking deal! If they aren’t willing to honour it, you tell them First National offered us an even better rate, and we’re going to walk across the street and jump in bed with them. Citibank will be left with sweet fuck all. If that’s what they want, we’re happy to oblige. Just tell them that, and stop tiptoeing around those assholes. We hold the cards on this one. We are in the power seat. They need us.”

“Okay, okay. Leave it with us. We’re on it,” Liam said, as the two of them inched toward the door.

“And if they give you any more shit, tell them the next call will be from me to their chairman. Tell them that!”

“Will do, Evelyn. We’re on it.”

They both slunk out, bumping in to each other in the doorway and immediately started arguing in the corridor.

“Keep walking boys, I can still hear you,” she shouted, before turning back to me. “Jesus, it’s hard to get good help around here. I have to do everything my goddamn self.”

“That was quite a display, Mom,” I said, still reeling from the encounter.

“Why, thank you, Ev.”

“It wasn’t really intended as a compliment.”

She snapped her eyes onto me.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Well, you were kind of mean to them, weren’t you?”

“Look, Everett, I didn’t make it all the way to the corner office by being nice, and touchy-feely, and tolerant of idiots. You have to be tough. This is how business gets done in the real world.”

“I get the need to be tough. And I’m proud of what you’ve achieved. You’re a big-deal
CEO
. But can’t you get there without being rude?”

She smiled.

“Would you say that to your father, if he were
CEO
of this company?”

I thought about it. Good question.

“I hope I would, but, to be honest, I don’t know,” I said. “It just seems that men
CEOS
are often megalomaniacal assholes. It’s almost a stereotype. But I don’t remember you being like this when I was a kid. So I guess I’m wrestling with whether you’re
just masquerading as a male
CEO
or if treating those two finance guys like you just did is who you really are, now.”

“You’re getting too Freudian for me. But there’s no masquerade. I’m just trying to do the best job I can. And that sometimes means raising my voice, stomping my feet, and reminding people that I’m the
CEO.”

I nodded.

The silence hung between us for a few beats.

“Is your father getting any better at all?” she asked, at last mercifully changing the subject.

“I think he has improved in the last week,” I started. “The physios told me it would happen like this. He’d struggle for the first several weeks, and then we’d start to see some modest gains. I’d say we’ve just started to see those modest gains. He’s faster on his feet. He’s able to lift his foot higher off the ground when he walks. And he seems to be gaining some control over his left knee. And that news is hot off the presses.”

“Good. Because he still looks like he’s struggling, to me.”

“Mom, he
is
struggling. And a month from now, he’ll still be struggling. But he is getting better. And he seems pretty dedicated to his recovery. He’ll get there. Plus, the mobility and fine motor control in his left hand is ahead of schedule thanks to how much time he spends …”

“Please don’t make another balls joke. Your father has milked that one well past its expiry date.”