Trilemma

by Jennifer Mortimer

  I wonder whether I have an admirer. I smile, shake my head, and toss the fragment away.

  If so, they’ll need something more than chocolates to get my attention.

  Chapter 19

  “Hello my friend, long time, no see!” says Sally when I open the door.

  Her hair is tied back in a ponytail and she is wearing knee-length orange pants and an embroidered white peasant blouse that emphasizes her splendid chest.

  She waves a small yellow card in my face. “You told me to ask you again closer to the date. Get a life, Lin! Come to the wine festival with us!”

  “What? Now?”

  “You’ve got five minutes.”

  She seems to have forgiven my lack of care over our friendship. Her eyes are bright and her generous smile is as wide as her hips.

  I look at her, I look at my watch, I look at the table covered in papers, and make a fast decision.

  I miss Sally. I want her as my friend.

  “What is the weather supposed to be like?” I ask, opening the wardrobe.

  “Well it might be hot and it might be cold,” she says from the living room. “You never know. Last year it rained and the year before it hailed. But that’s okay. If it’s too fine people get too smashed.”

  “So you aim to only get a little bit smashed?”

  “I aim to get well and truly smashed, Lin, but not too fast. Take my advice,” she says. “At the first couple of tents buy tasting plates and only buy tasting-size portions of wine.”

  I change quickly into jeans and a black top and then agonize before finally extracting an ice-blue linen jacket and changing my black top for a white shirt. I survey myself in the mirror. Yes. Then I clatter down the stairs behind Sally.

  Polly realizes we are leaving and lies down inside the hallway.

  “Out, out, damned dog,” Sally cries as she pushes the dog out the door. Polly looks after us with an expression of dejection.

  “She’s as bad as John.”

  “I thought it was John’s voice I heard last night.”

  “Yeah, he proposed.”

  “What? You mean marriage?”

  “So old-fashioned of him.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Told him I wasn’t ready to settle down. Don’t look at me like that! He’s not quite right for me, Lin. He’s not handsome, and he’s definitely no longer well paid. I’ll admit he is a very kind man and sometimes he’s good company when he’s not harping on about how he’s been done wrong. But he doesn’t measure up.” She smiles. “Or maybe I’m still enjoying playing the field. Why settle for one man when you can have two?”

  “I don’t know how you do it. Dating your men and yet still being a good mother to Michael as well as your work at the hospital. You have it all: a career, lovers, family.”

  Sally pauses on the path and glances down at me.

  “What you get is never quite as cut-and-dried as that. You make compromises and you make sacrifices, every day.

  “My career? Being a pathologist was never what I wanted to do, it’s what I ended up doing because, well, just because. Cutting up dead men to see what killed them is not, I repeat not, glamorous at all.

  “Lovers? None of them are going to stay around as I get older and my skin starts to wrinkle and my belly absorbs my waist. Lovers are a young woman’s game.

  “Family? I have Michael, so yes, I’m lucky. But I’ve lost people too. My brother died when I was twelve and it hurts every day. Dad, well, Dad left us when I was twenty, and my mother, hah! My mother is a piece of work. Don’t mourn too much for the lack of family, Lin; they bring as much pain as gain. Sometimes a little bit of family is all you need.”

  She waves as a van appears outside the garage. It screeches to a halt, narrowly missing the letterbox. Karim is at the wheel, and John is sitting behind him, his eyes fixed on Sally. Two pretty young women I vaguely recognize from the Matterhorn are in the backseats.

  “I thought you were happy,” I say.

  “I am happy. Aren’t you?”

  “I guess. Yes. Of course I’m happy.”

  This year the sun is shining and the skies are clear of clouds. I follow Sally’s advice and sample the salt cod and the whitebait fritters and sip on Méthode Champenoise. Sally’s eyes are bright under her satyrlike brows and she is swigging a full glass of red wine. She seems to have forgotten about the sensible half-glass measures.

  “Fantastic Pinot!” she cries. “Have you tried it yet?”

  I shake my head. “Can’t stomach red wine before midday.”

  “John, get Lin something. What do you feel like, Lin?”

  I scan the Board. “Pinot Blush,” I reply. “I guess that’s a rosé?”

  “Two blushes!” directs Sally.

  By the time we reach the fifth estate, the first casualties of the day lie collapsed in the trenches between the rows of vines, and even I am feeling lightened up and relaxed. I buy a full glass of Riesling and prepare to enjoy my day while the band plays “Cheryl Moana Marie,” but as I gaze around the crowded courtyard, a figure I recognize as Hera’s CFO waves at me from the far side.

  I drop my hand and tip out the wine in my glass and refill it from my water bottle. Then I nudge Sally and nod to where Deepak is sitting.

  “A guy from work. I’d better say hi.”

  She pats my arm and turns back to her men.

  It is quieter where Deepak sits.

  “I almost didn’t recognize you without the glasses,” he says. “The others have gone to get more wine. We’ve been up to Te Kairanga and now we’re making our way back.”

  A shadow falls over me. When I turn, Scott Peake is behind me, swaying slightly, his face flushed, his eyes rimmed with red.

  “That’s my chair.”

  Deepak’s earnest smile falters. “There are other chairs, Scott.” He heads across the grass, foraging for chairs.

  “That’s MY chair!” Peake says again.

  A couple of people sitting at nearby tables look over but turn away. I get up and give him the damned chair. He stands over it staring at me, and then splashes wine across the seat.

  “You’re a lezzy, aren’t you? I don’t want to feel the heat from your arse.”

  “What?” I say, thinking I can’t have heard him correctly.

  “You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Well you’ve got a surprise coming,” he hisses, his face suffused in blotches of broken blood vessels. “You’re going to get your comeuppance, lezzy bitch.”

  Deepak returns with a captured chair.

  Peake swings around and smiles at him. “Thanks, dipshit, sorry, Deepak!”

  I look at Peake’s flushed face and at my glass. My hand rises toward him.

  “Lin, I didn’t know you’d be here.” Tom arrives with Ian at his heels.

  I lower the glass. They don’t seem to have noticed Peake and I are about to cross glasses. Peake’s red-rimmed eyes stare at me and his nose twitches, then his habitual smile emerges, and he slaps Tom on the back.

  “Have you heard the one about the Bin Laden cell they’ve found in South Auckland? They’ve arrested Bin Drinkin’, Bin Fightin’, and Bin Sleepin’ but they still haven’t found Bin Workin’.”

  He laughs and Tom smiles and shakes his head.

  Ian lurches like a zombie marketeer. His thatch of hair sticks out in all directions and his eyes resemble poached eggs.

  “I’ve tried all the winesh so far,” he says. “What about you? Or you still tettle, teet, teetotal?”

  I smile and toast him with my wine glass of water. “Water. I’m enjoying the food and the music.”

  Walking back to Sally, I take one last look at the group of my workmates and their friend. Peake is once again staring at me, and, as I watch, he sticks a finger in the air, waggles it, and smirks.

  “Asshole.”

  “Who? Me?” says Sally.

  “No, just some jerk I sacked,” I reply.

  John looks up and glares. “Sacked jerks have f
eelings too.”

  Suddenly, I feel sorry for him. To have so much and to lose it all, well, it can destroy you.

  “You’ll get back into the kind of job you’re used to,” I say.

  John shakes his head.

  “Do you have any children?” I ask him, desperate to find something positive in his life.

  “Two stepdaughters. But their mother won’t let me see them. She says I’m no relation, so why would they be interested in staying in touch?”

  “Any other family?”

  John shakes his head. “A sister in Auckland. But I haven’t seen her for a while. She is embarrassed by me.”

  “Is that where you lived?”

  “I used to live about an hour up the coast, in a big white house looking out across Kapiti to the west and the Tararuas to the east.” John’s eyes glow and he raises his hands and gesticulates. “Shaped like this, climbing up the hill, with a long, sloping roof partly made of glass panels. And a swimming pool and ten acres of good land for the ponies.”

  “It sounds beautiful.”

  But the smile ebbs away. “She’s raised money against it, and now the bank is threatening to foreclose because I can’t afford to pay off the huge mortgage she’s racked up.”

  “Hopefully, you’ll get something out of it when it sells.”

  He sighs. “It’s worth a lot less since the market crashed.”

  Clouds are creeping slowly across the blue, and the air starts to chill. Sally staggers back holding cake and more wine. Her hair is slipping out of the tie, and loose wisps curl around her cheeks. Karim follows behind with coffee.

  “Oo-er,” Sally swallows her last crumbs of Madeira cake. “I think I’m done.” She puts her hand on Karim’s arm and he steadies her.

  “Thanks, sweetie,” she says and leans against him.

  John stares at the pair of them. “Fuck this!” He scrambles awkwardly to his feet.

  Sally looks up. “Be back at the car at five.”

  John scowls at her. “I’ll make my own way home.” He staggers away and vanishes into the crowd.

  “It seems you can’t have both after all,” I say.

  Sally stares at me, her eyes suddenly bright, then she blinks and her face relaxes into its habitual smile.

  “Win some, lose some.”

  She made the van wait half an hour in case John turned up, but he never showed.

  The trip back is quiet. Sally sleeps beside me, her head lolling as the van twists back and forth down the mountain. The other passengers are also silent. Halfway down we have to stop to let one of the nurses get out to be sick.

  Sally wakes up, looks around, and then closes her eyes again.

  I remember the tender light in John’s eyes. Oh, Sally. I don’t think he would leave you when you grow old.

  Chapter 20

  Every morning I wish I could walk down through the forest and through the pretty city streets, but every day is so full I take the fastest route, which means driving. When I step out of the car into the underground car park, I pull on my corporate persona before I catch the elevator up to my office. I hate being in that tiny confined space, but I do it anyway.

  Every evening I wish I could walk home, but it is late by the time I leave and even in this safe little city I would not choose to walk alone through the dark parks at night.

  When I open the door of my apartment, I kick off my heels, toss my jacket on the sofa, remove my spectacles, and fix myself a drink. My apartment is my refuge, where I can just be me and not the image I show to the world.

  The end of the week arrives in a rush. I do not meet up again at the Matterhorn to play at doctors and nurses with Sally and her friends. Instead, I attend the ballet with Luke from LCNS and his cohorts. It is soothing to accept the attention of the smiling salesmen. My wish is their command. Luke bends his handsome head to listen to my every facile statement. Food and drink arrives without any effort on my part. I pick at the portion and sip on mineral water. Taxis appear to whisk me to the performance and will appear again at the end of the evening to whisk me home.

  I don’t take their polite ministrations seriously. It is the role they defer to, not the woman. When the ballet is over and we have met the ballerinas, forced to entertain us in return for sponsorship, I turn eagerly for home, craving my own quiet space and my cool empty bed like a drug.

  There is an item in the network build report that doesn’t make any sense. I stand up and rub the back of my neck. I want to walk somewhere, but there’s never enough time. All I can do is take the stairs to the basement where Tom has his lair.

  Tom is eating his morning snack. His mouth is full of sausage roll and he has tomato sauce smeared on his lip.

  “Tom, what is this ‘koha’ entry for twenty thousand dollars?”

  He swallows and picks up a serviette to wipe his mouth. Crumbs fall onto his desk and he carefully wipes them into his hand and throws them into his rubbish bin.

  “Tom?”

  “Koha is what we pay to the local iwi to bless our venture,” he says. “And to remove any bad things from the path of our network.”

  “What do you mean, ‘bad things’?”

  Tom looks away from my face. “Taniwha,” he replies.

  “What?”

  “Taniwha. Bad spirits.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “This is the Maori way, Lin. We must pay koha and the elders will make sure that no Taniwha curse our network.”

  “So koha is what, a bribe?”

  Tom’s jaw tightens. “You don’t understand our ways here in New Zealand. Koha is a sign of respect, a donation for the elders to distribute to their people.”

  I stare at him. He is right, I don’t understand. But that doesn’t mean I should reject what he is saying.

  “It’s your call, Tom. If this is customary, then I guess we pay.”

  Tom nods and his face relaxes.

  “You don’t really believe in bad spirits, do you, Tom?”

  Tom flushes red. “Of course I bloody don’t. But don’t expect me to admit that in public.”

  “We’d better go through the rest of these figures,” I say.

  Tom pulls over a chair for me and we spend the rest of the day examining what we can cull or reduce to keep within our budget.

  At nine o’clock I say, “Let’s get something to eat.”

  It has started to drizzle. The streets of the business district are nearly empty at this hour; just the cleaners and a few other late workers like Tom and me walk the forlorn footpaths.

  The drizzle turns into a downpour, the rain tossing water sideways at us like a hose. “The Arbitrageur is closest,” Tom says and I follow him into a modern bar.

  Suddenly the urge to relax and have a glass of wine overwhelms me.

  Tom glances at me in surprise when I take up the wine list. “Coming off the wagon?”

  “Just a glass. But it has to be good.”

  The barman climbs halfway up a ladder as if in a library. His hands reach out to find the bottle I have ordered. His head dips to check the label. I see him nod and climb back down. A moment later he stands at the table, whipping off the cork with a deft twist of his wrist. He smells the cork and places it on the table in front of us.

  “Who will taste?” he asks and I hold out my glass. I swirl the small sample into a little whirlpool, the dark liquid releasing its secret aromas, and lift the glass to my lips.

  I nod to the waiter and he fills our glasses.

  “Salut!”

  “Cheers,” says Tom and keeps his eyes on mine while he sips the wine.

  “I hear you know Nicholas Johnson,” I say.

  “Who?”

  “Nick Johnson. He’s a property agent. Used to be a developer, he tells me.”

  Tom’s face looks blank. “Never heard of him. I use Exodus to manage my rental property,” he says. “Matt Holmes in the Petone office.”

  “I must have misunderstood what he said.”

  “Someon
e you’re seeing?”

  “No way.”

  Tom laughs. “Sorry.”

  He leans in when I speak and watches my mouth while I suck the flesh from the dark olives and spit out the pits. The creamy softness of Kikorangi cheese oozes over my tongue while the blue edge hits the back of my throat. I swallow and turn my attention next to the flaccid stalks of oyster mushrooms that lie on a bed of creamed leeks.

  Tom reaches out and touches my hand. “You look so tired.”

  “I am tired,” I reply. “There is always something to worry about.”

  He pours the last of the wine into my glass. By now the warm feeling has made its way throughout my body, and I almost order another before I remember who I am.

  Tom looks into my eyes. “You don’t have to bear the burden all by yourself.”

  But I am not a Harlequin heroine. I have no urge to rest my head on his strong, manly shoulder. Instead, I sit back in my seat and put on my corporate smile, the one that never touches my eyes, and pick up the water glass.

  “Where does your wife think you are tonight?”

  “I told her I’d be late,” he replies.

  “You’re lucky. Having the wife and children, and the whanau.”

  “Yes,” Tom replies. “I am.”

  He looks at me again with his attractive smile. “What about you, Lin? You’ve proven you’re Wonder Woman when it comes to the career, but isn’t it about time you had a family?”

  I shrug. “I enjoy my job too much.”

  “Do you?” Tom says.

  “Of course.”

  It is late by the time I get home, too late for a soak in the spa. All I seek is to get inside out of the rain, slip between my crisp sheets, close my eyes, and sleep.

  There is something lying on the doorstep. A backpack. I wonder whose it is, and lean over to get to the door keypad. As the door opens, light falls on the discarded pack. It looks familiar.

  I glance around, but there is no sign of the owner. As I step past, it falls onto the path and into the rain. I enter the house and close the door behind me.

  Later, wide awake, I hear a couple of perfunctory woofs, as if Polly is letting whoever is moving outside know that the house is under guard and not to think they can get away with anything.