Trilemma

by Jennifer Mortimer

  Ben is holding the guitar. “It’s a beauty. I had to rescue it.”

  The fire has taken hold of the front of the house, but the thick wood is slowing it.

  “Soak your blanket in the trough by the gate,” I tell Cheryl. Ben whacks the flames with the blankets again and again. A methylated spirits bottle, the head broken, rolls out from under the ashes.

  And then Wal arrives with Murray, and they have fire extinguishers, and we quickly put the fire out.

  Wal looks at the burnt studio. “What the hell happened?”

  “Did you leave coals burning, mate?” asks Murray.

  “Get the girls back to the house, Muz,” Wal tells him. “We’ll be along soon.”

  I wrap Cheryl in a blanket and send her away with Murray and rejoin the men.

  “The door was jammed shut,” Ben says. “Looked like the barbecue was propped against it. And we found this.” Ben kicks the meth’s bottle towards Wal. “I didn’t use meth’s to start the fire, and I don’t remember seeing the bottle.”

  Wal bends to see it. “Did you hear anything?”

  “I thought I heard something, but I wasn’t sure,” I say. “But it meant I was awake and noticed the smoke in time.”

  Wal looks at us with a somber expression. “This is serious. You could have all been killed.”

  We enter the studio and pick through the debris.

  “Sorry about the television, Wal.”

  He laughs. “Vivienne has a few spares.”

  Ben and Wal climb the ladder and rescue our possessions. Wal fills Cheryl’s bag with her clothes.

  “We’ll get anything we missed tomorrow.”

  Back at the farmhouse, Alison is in control. Cheryl emerges from the bathroom dressed in a robe two sizes too large for her. Her face is drawn.

  “She has a couple of nasty burns,” says Alison. “Let’s have a look at yours.”

  She gets to work with her salves and bandages. “Wal will take you up to Vivienne’s to sleep.”

  My burns are okay, manageable, and Alison’s salve helps. The cuts on Ben’s hands are bleeding. Ben protests when Alison insists on bandaging them entirely. But I tell him we don’t want to get any blood on Vivienne’s precious sheets, do we? That shuts him up.

  I look at Cheryl who sits rocking herself in the corner. “How do you think he found her?”

  Wal is standing by the fireplace, a frown on his face. “I suppose word got around we had a visitor staying.”

  Cheryl shakes her head. “Why did he try to hurt me? Doesn’t he care about me?”

  “We have to report this,” Ben says.

  “Was there any proof it was Joe?” I say.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Or even proof it was arson?”

  “I know I put out the fire in the barbecue and I know we didn’t leave it so close to the door that it could have fallen and jammed the door shut. But I can’t prove it.”

  “So there’s no proof.” I look down. “I’m not too keen on reporting this, Ben. I’m the chief executive of Hera. I can’t afford that kind of publicity.”

  “It’s dangerous, Lin.”

  “I can’t take the risk.”

  Ben lets out a long sigh. “All right, we won’t take it to the police. But, Cheryl, you’ll have to leave now he’s found you.”

  Ben, Cheryl, and I drive back to Wellington. It is a quiet trip. We don’t get there until late.

  Ben and I lie in my bed. We lie apart. It hurts to touch anything with my hands.

  “I am sorry,” he says. “I have to go with her. She’s lost everything—her home, the man she loved, and the children she will always love. All she has left is Emmy and me.”

  “I know.”

  “And I’ve got to be there to protect her in case Joe finds her again.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re so strong, Lin,” he says. “And Cheryl isn’t.”

  “I know.”

  Early in the morning their taxi arrives.

  I kiss Ben.

  “Safe journey,” I say and turn to hug Cheryl. “Take care.”

  “You take care too,” she says, and hugs me back.

  “I’m not the one with a psycho ex-lover,” I mutter under my breath.

  Then I stand watching as he carries their bags to the taxi and leaves me, again.

  Part III

  Knock the Bastard Off

  Chapter 42

  By late January, the FP X68 is planted in the heart of the concrete bunker, and bundles of fiber extend themselves like roots along the walls, through the carefully constructed openings, and down the corridors until they reach the street. There the roots stretch beneath the streets, forking when they meet an inter-section and sending smaller bundles twisting and turning in their trenches down the Esplanade, across Cuba, down Jackson, and out into the suburbs. Here the roots emerge into daylight, climb the poles and become branches, stretching from pole to pole, tied off and ready for that last spurt of cabling that will reach into each property to meet its final destiny in an outlet with a wireless modem somewhere on the inside wall of your house.

  The master bundle of roots will continue down the Esplanade, alongside the railway tracks and into the city, where they will intertwine with the roots of other great trees, older but not necessarily thicker, and certainly not as smart. One spur will end in our offices on the quay, snaking in through the basement where they are captured and fixed into the network boards. From there the captured cables will sedately twirl around each room and up through the walls to the next floor and the one above until finally they arrive in Hera’s boardroom where I now sit, ready to present to the Board.

  “Gentlemen,” I say. “We are on target to launch on the first of March.

  “The switch has been commissioned and the interconnect tests between our network and Kiwicom’s are going well,” I tell them. Their faces don’t move. “We expect to complete within two weeks.”

  “Interconnect tests take months,” states Chairman Hobb. “How can you be sure you’re going to get the sign-off from Kiwicom?”

  I look down and let my lips form a small, satisfied smile. “They haven’t been able to fault us. The customer, mediation, and billing packages have been configured for our products and processes.”

  They are still looking stern. “Did you make the changes we suggested?” asks Hobb.

  “We made the high priority changes.”

  “We expect all the changes we asked for to be made.”

  I look down. This time I don’t smile. “We will add the others in the first post-launch release.”

  Hobb glances at Stanton, sighs, and shuffles his papers.

  “We’re waiting on the interfaces before starting the tests of the end-to-end processes.”

  “You haven’t completed the integration?” asks Robert.

  “We’ve completed the high-volume transactional interfaces. We’ll handle the low-volume interfaces manually until we have time to automate them. We’re making good progress on the operational and management reports,” I say with pride, because we have been working long hours on the systems and we’re very nearly there.

  Tom has been our steadiest rock during the last few weeks of pulling together the operation. When Fred became anxious over test results, Tom made the decisions on what was important and must be fixed, and what was less important and could be handled manually. Marion walked the floors and listened to all the complaints and the fears and the last-minute panicking over what was too late to fix, and Ian laughed and cracked jokes and kept us sane.

  Peake? Peake smiled and said little.

  But still the directors frown.

  “The call center is up and running and we will have our customer operations staff in place by the end of the week. We start customer service training next week and process training in two weeks’ time.”

  “Why not now?” snaps Stanton.

  “We’re still working on the processes to handle the excep
tions. As you know, at the beginning of a new service, exceptions are generally the rule.”

  But the Board is not amused.

  “The warehouse is stocked with three-months’ supply of residential cable and modems.” I look around the table and every bastard’s face still looks stern. “We have taken on our first team of salespeople. The sales material will be available in two weeks’ time.”

  “Why the delay?”

  “The lawyers have only just finalized the terms and conditions. There were some changes they wanted made to the fees for breaking contracts.

  “As agreed, we’re launching quietly in order to reduce the calls into the call center and so we can best manage customer expectations over installation lead times.”

  Dammit, their faces are still sour.

  Hobb speaks, “We want to review the business plan. We’re considering making some changes to the network rollout, and I want to know the impact.”

  “Changes?” I say. “It’s late to be changing the build plans. I don’t think we—”

  “Peake says he can start this weekend. Get the rest of the management team together to work on it on Saturday.”

  My lips part and then close again. No point telling the chairman I had made other plans.

  “What did they say? Were they pleased?” asks Ian, his face breaking into a wide grin.

  “Did they approve the approach for testing?” asks Fred, with an anxious frown.

  “Will they let us appoint a customer champion?” Marion asks, her face its normal placid state.

  Tom says nothing. His eyes gaze at me then he turns to stare out the window at the yachts that dance across the water of the harbor.

  Peake has not come to my office for a debrief. He chairs the audit and finance committee and is still discussing details of the latest figures with Stanton and Hobb.

  “They’re not unhappy,” I say. “I didn’t talk about the testing issue, Fred. The time wasn’t right.”

  I glance at Marion. Her eyes watch mine. “Nor was it the right time to suggest a customer champion.”

  “Is there anything we need to know?” Tom asks.

  I stare into his face, his jaw now set in a grim line. “No.”

  That night I open a very good bottle of wine and fill my glass, but it tastes like soap. The excitement I had been feeling about the successful progress has evaporated.

  Up on the roof the Jacuzzi waits, cool and passive, forgotten about for weeks. When I look at my watch, I realize, no; no time to heat the water, I’ll be asleep before it’s even tepid, let alone hot. I sip the wine and look out on the lights of Wellington. The yachts have gone from the water. Back to their berths, I guess, with their crews in the bars by the marina, talking of wind shifts and the time it takes to raise the spinnaker and which boats did what and to whom.

  Tonight I had been expecting to feel like Caesar: conqueror, and a winner, admired and respected.

  I sip the wine again. I had been saving this bottle. I hadn’t expected to open it tonight. I’d expected to be down there in the city, drinking with the Board, toasting the fact that Hera has reached the point where we would make that launch date unless something very unexpected happens. Instead, I shiver as the ever-present breeze nudges my back.

  With a last glance, I turn away and go back down into the apartment. I have one last task to complete.

  There is no answer. “Ben,” I say to his voice mail system. “I won’t be able to make it this weekend. I’m sorry. Crisis at work.” I pause, wondering what to tell him, but there isn’t anything else to say.

  “I’ll call you,” and I hang up.

  Chapter 43

  When I get home, late again, and eat cheese and a few crackers because I’m not hungry, I tell myself that tomorrow I’ll do something different, find some way of relaxing so I can sleep, but each night follows the same pattern.

  I go to bed exhausted yet night after night I jerk awake in the early morning and don’t seem to be able to fall back to sleep. There are so many things that could go wrong, and we have so little time to fix anything. In the darkest hour, the one before dawn, I feel a sense of unease. I tell myself it’s just the effect of blood sugar levels being low and I turn and face the other way hoping to get more comfortable. But when I do manage to fall asleep, it seems only minutes pass before I wake groggily from deep unconsciousness to the sound of my cell phone’s alarm and I crawl out of bed to once again face the day’s trials.

  And so the days pass until the weekend arrives, and each Friday night I tell myself I’ll sleep in tomorrow, but every Saturday I wake at five and stay awake, mulling over the week’s problems and wondering if I should have made different decisions.

  I tidy the house and do the laundry and pay the bills and shop for groceries I won’t eat, then fall asleep trying to read the latest Kate Atkinson. I wake early and toss until it’s light outside then spend Sunday preparing for Monday and telling myself I’ll catch up with friends the following weekend and so it goes on.

  Four weeks out from the launch date, I have to cancel my trip to see Ben again because the Board is in town and they want an update. When I arrive home that Friday night, I step in the door and trip over a pack. Ben? Ben! But no, I don’t recognize this pack.

  Someone has hung a gauzy green dress on my bookcase. Someone has been sitting in my chair at the table, which is pulled out and has a jacket thrown over the back, and someone has been drinking from my favorite orange-and-black mug, which sits on the kitchen counter.

  A slip of paper is lying on the table. “Hey Auntie Lin, Max and I got tickets to the rugby. Hope it’s okay if we stay? Jess. ”

  It is the weekend of Wellington’s premier sporting event—the International Rugby Sevens contest—when all the spectators dress up and parade the streets. I’d been offered tickets, but I had expected to be in Queenstown with Ben, now canceled, so instead I watch a sad movie and drink a bottle of wine and fall into bed shortly before they stumble home, giggling, young, life all before them, not yet disillusioned when all their dreams come true and they find it wasn’t what they wanted after all.

  “Shh, shh,” they whisper, the giggles stop, and we go to sleep, me in my big double bed, them on their separate sofas.

  In the morning, I emerge when I hear Max making coffee. Max’s face breaks into that beautiful, wide smile, and Jess manages a small, restrained smirk, and they seem happy to see me, happy to claim me as their aunt.

  These kids are my family, my whanau.

  The cloud lifts a little, and I smile and pull open the fridge and make the traditional gifts that aunts make: food, followed by spending money.

  When Max heads downtown to buy something they need, ear extensions I think he said, Jess curls up on the sofa and lets me cook breakfast for her.

  “Mum’s driving me round the bend!” she says. “She’s like, that’s a nice dress, Jess, but don’t you think you should wear a sweater with it? And Dad is so embarrassing. He made some really stupid comments on my Facebook page about how cute I was. I was so embarrassed and my friends were saying, ‘like what’s with the dude? Is he into you or what?’”

  I laugh. “Parents should keep off their kids’ Facebook pages.”

  “Yeah!” she says. “I had to defriend him. You know what I mean? And I get the hard nag from Mum on helping around the house. Not that I do anything right. I had to get Max to bring me here to get away from her.”

  “Have you decided what you’re going to do now you’ve finished school?”

  Jess looks down at her eggs. She pushes a fragment back and forth across the plate and then forks it and puts it in her mouth. Her eyes flick toward me and away again.

  “Spit it out. And I don’t mean the egg.”

  “I want to study fashion design, Auntie Lin. In Wellington.”

  “And your parents aren’t keen?”

  “Mum wants me to go to the tech in Hastings. But Wellington’s program is the best in New Zealand.” She plays with her egg again. �
��I submitted my portfolio in October, and they’ve offered me a place.”

  Jess reminds me so much of myself at the same age. Mom wanted me to go to the local college, but I applied to schools far, far away and eventually took up a scholarship in England.

  “If it’s what you want, then you should go for it. Go for the best you can.”

  She looks up with a shy smile. “You really think so? I mean, I can get a student loan and all that, so I can afford to leave home. Of course, I’ll go back from time to time.”

  I never did go back.

  “What about Max? Does he want to leave too?”

  “Not Max. Ngatirua is all he’s ever wanted. And he won’t leave his mother to look after the place by herself, nor Wal without help on the farm.”

  “Your parents seem to love him.”

  “Yeah, more than me.”

  “Rubbish, Jess.”

  “I suppose so. I don’t mind that they love him so much. It means I’m free to leave because he’ll be there for all of them.”

  “Poor Max!”

  “No, it’s lucky Max. Lucky it makes him happy to be needed.”

  I doze in the sun and dream I am trapped in a dark place, but then Sally arrives to rescue me. Sally is wearing scrubs, and slung over her front is a large playing card depicting the Queen of Hearts.

  “You too?” I ask.

  “We’re determined to win this year,” she replies.

  Soon we’re in the city sitting at a table watching groups of revelers in fancy dress on their way to the International Rugby Sevens tournament.

  “Here comes the rest of the pack.” I wave to the crowd.

  A gaggle of medics wearing cards, talking and laughing and jostling for position, sweep up to our viewpoint on the side of the road.

  John is amongst them. As I watch, he looks at Sally, and she looks back at him. John’s face relaxes into a tentative smile. He stops.

  Sally doesn’t move. The pageant seems to flicker around us, and everything seems to narrow to Sally and I sitting in a café, while a man waits for her to make a decision.