Trilemma

by Jennifer Mortimer

  Then nothing more. I lie gazing into the darkness, listening to the rain hitting the tin roof. I roll over on my side with my knees tucked up against my chest and resolutely close my eyes. Still sleep fails to come. The pattering increases in tempo. It must be hosing down outside. I let out my breath and roll onto my back again.

  It is no use. When I reach the bottom of the stairs. I turn on the outside light and open the door.

  Light spills out over the porch, washing him with gold as he sits with his back against the dog box and his arms wrapped around his legs. As he looks up, a droplet of water slips down his cheek and splatters on his damp t-shirt.

  “Fricking idiot!” I say. “You’d better come in out of the rain.”

  Chapter 21

  “I’m not happy with the sensitivity analysis,” says Board Chairman Hobb, flicking through the spreadsheets. “I can’t see how we’re going to get enough revenue coming in to cover the higher costs.”

  Dao has his arms folded. He glances at Hobb and then back at me. I can’t read his face behind the reflective lenses. Pita Lane rubs his nose and turns some pages over. He doesn’t meet my eyes.

  “The financials are bloody poor!” says Hobb finally. “We’re even more over budget than we were last month.”

  Why is he acting surprised? I had already warned him of the situation and told him the cupboard was bare.

  Robert’s face is serious and when his eyes meet mine, they slide away. There must be something going on.

  “We’re where we were expecting to be, Stewart,” I say. “As I warned you, changing the build plans to focus on the commercial streets has slowed us down.”

  “Weren’t you supposed to catch up?”

  “We couldn’t get permission from the council to work outside of the times they allow for work in the commercial streets.” I say. “Once we get into the residential neighborhoods, the speed of the build will increase.”

  “That’s what? February? Too late,” says Stanton.

  “We will have enough live, lit, fiber to launch the service. That’s the critical outcome, isn’t it?”

  “But not hitting the build figure this month means we’ve broken the banking covenants. The bank doesn’t have to keep funding the rollout. Which means we will have to fund the operation ourselves until we negotiate a new position,” Hobb says.

  “Deepak and I met with the bank on Monday. They’re prepared to continue the line of credit, so long as we hit the launch date and incur no new costs above the figures we’ve given them.”

  “But they’re charging us a penalty as well as increasing the interest rate!” Hobb snaps.

  “Gupta was supposed to negotiate that down,” says Mark Stanton.

  “He hasn’t had any success yet.”

  “He’s too goddamn diffident,” says Robert.

  “That’s just his style,” I say, but the audience is not listening.

  Hobb looks across at Stanton. “Didn’t Gupta sign off the budget? He should have known better.”

  I pick my words carefully. “Building a new network and launching a telecommunication service is not an undertaking that happens very often. There are no blueprints, few guidelines, nothing on which to base a budget. So it’s not surprising some aspects need to be adjusted.”

  “My group is not keen to put up any more money,” Robert says and turns to Hobb. “What is Ozcom’s position? You said Ozcom has other lines we might call on.”

  Hobb’s eyes flicker. “I can look into some options. Let’s talk further tomorrow,” he says, and then faces me. His eyes are cool. “In the meantime, Lin, you need to tell us how you’re going to get a better handle on the finances.”

  I stare back. “Deepak is—”

  “Gupta has to go.”

  I look down briefly before raising my head again. “I don’t think it would be fair to blame Deepak for Hera’s situation.”

  “I don’t think you’re listening to me. I said Gupta has to go. We’re agreed, I think.” Hobb looks around the table at the other four Board members. One by one they nod their agreement.

  “He doesn’t have the experience we need going forward,” says Stanton.

  “He no longer has our trust,” says Robert.

  Dao and Lane merely nod. They are not putting their boots into the guy, but they’re not speaking up for him either.

  “You’re aware there is a process to follow? We can’t just sack the man.”

  “Just get it done, Lin. Use the budget blowouts. His fingerprints are all over them.”

  So, I think, but do not say, are yours. The Board approved the budgets, too, and insisted on the changes to the rollout that has caused us the network build shortfall.

  “We should also congratulate Lin and the team on the excellent progress made,” says Dao.

  “Okay, minute our congratulations,” Hobb says to Helen and she quickly types. “Don’t minute anything about Gupta. Lin knows what she has to do.”

  Yeah, I know what I have to do. Sack someone who deserves no more of the blame than anyone else who was involved in the business plan.

  It is not straightforward to get rid of an employee by New Zealand law. But if the Board loses confidence in the chief financial officer, his or her position becomes untenable. Deepak would understand the situation.

  While I wait for him to arrive, I stand and gaze out the window at the yachts in the harbor. Deepak coughs, and I swing around with a fake smile that will not convince and gesture for him to sit at my table. I close the door.

  I tell him how concerned the Board is about Hera’s financial situation. He replies angrily that they’ve known all along we would need more funding. When I tell him he no longer has the Board’s support, Deepak’s lip quivers. He rises hastily and turns his back. I stop talking and wait for him to regain his composure. He drops his head and scuffs the carpet with his shoe, back and forth, back and forth.

  “So what do they want?”

  “I’m letting you know what the feeling is.”

  “They want me to go?”

  “They’re talking about performance failure over the handling of the budgets, the reporting, and how you’ve managed the relationship with the bank.”

  “They want me to go.”

  “I don’t think I can persuade them to trust you again.”

  “How much?”

  “Three months’ salary, and I’ll guarantee you the launch bonus. That’s worth over two months’ salary. And you deserve it, Deepak. You’ve done a terrific job for Hera.”

  Now he turns and can face me. “Not terrific enough, though, was it?”

  “It’s done,” I tell the chairman.

  “Good,” he says. “Good. When does he go?”

  “At the end of the week.”

  “Good.”

  “His number two is quite young, so I’ll—”

  “Scott Peake will take over,” he says. “He’s got the right background.”

  I look out the window to where the sea sparkles and a scattering of sails dance across the harbor. Lucky bastards, out on the water on a glorious day like today, one of Wellington’s good ones.

  Should I protest at being encumbered with a CFO I wouldn’t have chosen? Someone whom I dislike and who dislikes me?

  When I turn back, my face is carefully blank.

  “I would prefer a different choice.”

  Hobb meets my eyes. His nostril quivers as if he is disgusted by something. Or someone.

  “You don’t get to choose.”

  I break our locked gaze and look down.

  The chairman smiles and stands and stretches. “Get your girl to call me a taxi, will you?”

  “Helen, a taxi for Mr. Hobb.”

  Something’s going on, I can sense it. Robert replies to my urgent message and meets me for a drink that evening. I don’t mind having a drink with Robert, he knows who I am.

  “What the fuck was that all about?” I ask as soon as we sit down. “You guys must know that Deepak was only doing
what he was told.”

  “Perhaps he shouldn’t have done what he was told.”

  “Then you’d have dumped him and got someone else who would have.”

  “Or convinced us we were wrong and needed to put in more money. Then Hera might not exist at all. Or have different shareholders with different plans.”

  “I think it is unfair. Deepak has been a very good CFO. We wouldn’t have got this far without his hard work and common sense.”

  Robert laughs. “What’s fairness got to do with anything, Lin?”

  “What options did Hobb propose?” I ask.

  “Just make sure you hit that launch date, Lin,” Robert says. “And keep those costs under control.”

  “And Scott Peake as my new CFO? I don’t trust him.”

  Robert snorts. “Trust is a luxury in our world.”

  Driving home, I consider what Robert has said. Boards are there to set the company’s objectives and give the management team guidance on how to achieve them. I would like to trust that they would give the best possible direction.

  Then I wonder why neither the chairman nor Robert has shared with me any new plans being considered. How can I make the best decisions if I don’t know what the options are? I hate not knowing. It makes my stomach churn.

  Especially when I think about Scott Peake’s smile.

  Chapter 22

  It is after nine when I park the car in the garage and walk up to my front door.

  I wonder whether he will still be there. As I climb the stairs, the scent of something savory is wafting down the stairwell. I can hear the faint sound of music playing: Fado—Portuguese urban folk music. Songs of love, songs of loneliness, and songs of doom.

  I push open my door. The music swirls around me, loudly now. The table is laid for two and decorated with hydrangea blossoms and vanilla-scented candles. My new Hoglund crystal carafe is filled with red wine.

  The kitchen, however, looks like a bomb site of pots and pans and peelings. Amidst the debris a dish of lamb cutlets and a bowl of tossed salad sit waiting, a plate of cheeses beside them.

  I drop my jacket and handbag on the bed and the folder of papers on the bedside table. I climb halfway up the steps to the roof terrace. The Jacuzzi cover is off. I can’t see into the pool, but, as I watch, a hand emerges and takes up a can of beer.

  Downstairs, I close the bedroom door, discard my clothes, shower, change into a black tunic and jeans, replace my spectacles with contacts, and return to the living room.

  A glass of cold fizz sits on the table. I raise it to my lips and take a sip.

  The door to the terrace opens and Ben comes down the steps, blue eyes guileless, and his mouth slowly curving into the smile I know so well. His brown hair is tied back in a short ponytail, although damp tendrils stick to the side of his face, glowing from the heat of the spa. He wears a pair of baggy khaki shorts and a white t-shirt from which tanned arms emerge, glistening with cooling perspiration.

  We both stand still, each waiting for the other to make a move, but neither of us does so I pull out a chair and sit down, and Ben returns to the kitchen.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I say perfunctorily and take another sip of fizz.

  The cold bubbly liquid hisses its way down my throat.

  “Crisis at the office.”

  “No worries,” he replies.

  He’s not annoyed. Damn.

  “What are we having? Lamb chops?”

  But he is taking a tray out of the icebox. “I brought you some bluff oysters,” he says. “We’ll start with a dozen of those.”

  He nods toward the deck. “I was thinking of eating out there, but she’s a bit breezy.”

  “She’s nearly always a bit breezy here,” I say. “But you can’t beat Wellington on a good day.”

  “I brought some things you left behind in the studio.”

  He passes me a plastic bag. Inside is a worn-down lipstick in Woodland Berry, a paua shell earring in the shape of a feather, a heavy filigree necklace of brightly colored beads, and a knee-high stocking.

  There is something intimate about a discarded knee-high; that flaccid empty container, damp with the sweaty secretions of an absent foot. I push it aside with my finger and lift the necklace.

  “I wondered where that got to,” I say. “I missed it.”

  “I found it stuck down the back of a drawer.”

  He waits as if to hear me say I’ve missed him too, but I say nothing so he goes into the kitchen and returns with a dish of oysters.

  I look down at the half shells of oyster. I can smell the salty juices and the sharp tang of lemon. I haven’t eaten since the solitary scone with jam and cream in the warehouse this morning. My stomach rumbles. I tear a great fat juicy oyster from its shell and tip it into my mouth. Ben passes me a plate of thinly sliced brown bread to mop up the liquid.

  The juices drip down my chin. He reaches over with a napkin and wipes them away. Our eyes meet. His hand stills.

  Reality intervenes with the electronic jangle of my cell phone’s ringtone.

  “Hi, Tom. Yes, Hobb told me. No, I’m not happy. Whatever. No. You don’t need to. Let’s talk about it first thing. Right. Right.” I hang up.

  “So,” I say, around a mouth filled with another plump morsel, “when are you planning to go to your sister’s?”

  He told me when I made up a bed on the sofa for him that he was on his way to visit his sister, Cheryl, in Picton, a little port town at the top of the South Island.

  “Tomorrow,” Ben replies. “Or the next day. Doesn’t really matter.”

  I take the last oyster. “Tomorrow, Ben. I’ve got a function tomorrow night and a late meeting the next day.”

  He looks up and nods.

  Ben seldom argues. It is one of the most annoying things about him. I wish he’d stick up for himself more. Although not, of course, when it’s me who disagrees with him.

  He goes and brings in the lamb from the barbecue, puts it on the sideboard to rest and adds a knob of butter to the pan. The potatoes have been baked in cream, and then cut into wedges. He slips them into the butter. The room fills with the glorious scent of fried potatoes.

  I take out two red wine glasses. “My doctor friend Sally tells me butter and cream are okay so long as you drink red wine with the meal,” I say. “But,” and I eye the buttery, creamy potatoes. “We’ll need the whole bottle to counteract this lot.”

  “You’re looking a bit skinny, Lin. Thought I’d better fatten you up.”

  “Sometimes I’m so busy, I forget to eat.”

  I pour the red wine into the two goblets, and Ben brings in two plates of lamb, potatoes, and salad.

  He lifts his glass and clicks it against mine. “Cheers.”

  “Salut.”

  We sit at the table eating together as we have done countless times before. The silence is edgy. I glance at Ben’s profile as he scoops up a forkful of fries then return my gaze to my own plate. He looks at me, swallows, and puts down his fork.

  “Is the job going well?”

  “Well enough. Very political.”

  “Who’s the problem?”

  “More a question of who isn’t than who is. First off, there’s the Government who have an Old Boy network all of their own. They don’t mind the Brits, but they really don’t much like any other nationality. Especially not Americans, although they like our money.

  “And then there’s the local council. They don’t like any big business at all. It seems there is always a reason to say no and never a reason to help us out.”

  I spear some salad. “The power lines company is trying to rip us off, and Kiwicom wants us to miss the launch date and thereby remain a healthy dwarf. Bastards.”

  The lamb chops are moist and succulent beneath their crusting of herbs. The potatoes are to die for.

  “How is business?”

  Ben’s furniture made him a modest living. A very modest living. It used to constantly annoy me how little he cared about money.
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  “Slow. Cheryl rang up, worried about something or other that she hasn’t got round to telling me about. I’d just finished a table for a rich prick up in Queenstown, but his wife keeps changing her mind about the chairs, so I thought I’d come and see what’s wrong.”

  “How is she? Is she still with—what was his name?”

  Ben is eating his lamb chop with his fingers, tearing the flesh off the bone with his teeth. He puts down the bone and wipes his hands on one of my new napkins.

  “Bruce. No, they split. Now she’s with some guy called Joe. He has a houseful of children apparently, so she’s stepmum and stepaunt and even stepgrandmother to the youngest.”

  “That must make her very happy.”

  Cheryl was one of the pretty girls who were effortlessly adroit at capturing a tall, handsome, well-paid man. Bruce gave her everything she asked for but the one thing she really wanted—a baby. He had refused to adopt. When Cheryl called Ben, distraught, he’d dropped everything to comfort her.

  Including me. Which was okay. Ben knew he didn’t have to look out for me. I didn’t mind when he canceled the trip I’d paid for. I didn’t need to be coddled like Cheryl. I could look after myself. I was used to it.

  “What about your sisters? Since you’re here for a while, I figured you’d try to track them down.”

  “I found them. They live on a farm in Hawke’s Bay.”

  “Have you met?”

  “I tried, but they weren’t home.”

  “You should try again.”

  “When I get the time. How is Emmy?”

  His eyes crinkle and his mouth stretches into a fond smile. “She’s doing very well.”

  “Still splitting her time between your house and her mother’s?”

  “Yes, although Fay is on sabbatical in South Africa next year, so Emmy will be living with me full time.”

  Finally, Ben reaches out and touches my wrist. We haven’t yet talked about what has happened between us. I think he wants to, but doesn’t know how. He takes my hand in his and holds it and looks at me. His eyes are serious, sad, questioning.

  “Lin,” he says. “Lin?”

  But I shake my head and withdraw my hand. “I’ve got some reading to do,” I say. “If you need any more blankets, they’re in the cupboard.”