Monahan 01 Options (3 page)

Danny was a mommy’s boy. His identical twin Jonathan was the exact opposite. Jonathan had been married three times, no children. Thank God, Ev used to say. Their older sister Elaine was married and had one child, Sarah. Pictures of Sarah and Danny were plastered all over Ev’s office.

Evelyn’s husband died in 1955 in Korea leaving her with a three year old and two babies. It had been a struggle financially for Ev, but she never complained. Jonathan took his first bride when he was nineteen and was fast on his way to becoming a male Zsa Zsa Gabor. Elaine was a homemaker whose husband sold something, I couldn’t remember. They were the steady ones. Danny on the other hand had never held a job for more than a year, was one credit short of about eight different university degrees, and was totally inept when it came to women, other than his mama. Danny would regularly show up at the office with a homemade lunch for his mother and sit beside her and watch her eat it. He called her about six times a day, and every hour on the hour if she worked late. On nights when Ev was late at the office, she had to call him when she was leaving and he’d meet her at the subway stop. Ev used to throw her hands in the air and ask for medical proof that the umbilical cord had been cut when Danny was born. Danny was very protective of his mama and her death was going to devastate him.

“I hope she has more life insurance than the company provided,” I said to Jay. “Danny’s going to find it tough enough coping without his mama. When he has to find steady work, that should just about do him in.”

“Give the kid a break,” Jay said.

“Kid?” I snorted. “Jay, he’s almost old enough to be your father. He’s no kid. He’s forty-four years old.”

Jay shut up. He was twenty-eight years old but tried to act forty-eight.

We were sitting in the car outside Ev’s house. The streetlights cast shadows on the cars parked on the street. Other than the parked cars and Jay and I, the street was deserted. The car was facing in the direction of the Davisville subway station so we could see Danny when he walked down the street. I lit another cigarette and before Jay could snort at me, I rolled the window down.

“Nuts. Fucking nuts. Why would Ev be so stupid to eat something with nuts in it?” I asked out loud.

“Kate, do you think she would knowingly eat something with nuts in it?”

“I was talking to myself,” I snapped back.

I turned in the seat and looked at Jay. He was looking straight ahead and was running his hand through his hair. It was standing straight up. He did this repeatedly.

“You’re brushing. Stop it,” I ordered.

Jay mumbled something.

“Pardon?” I asked.

He turned to me and grinned. “I said leave me alone, Kate. I haven’t said a word all night about the two packs of cigarettes you’ve smoked. Stop nagging me about brushing my hair with my hand.”

It was about the only nervous habit he had. But he did have a point. Brushing his hair with his hand wasn’t going to give him emphysema and his teeth weren’t going to turn that lovely shade of gold that smokers get for no extra charge.

We sat quietly for a few minutes. “I’m going to have the caterers fired. That’s the last fucking time they get our business. Someone must have screwed-up and cooked something with peanut oil.”

“You can’t blame the caterers when they didn’t provide the food,” Jay said.

“Whaddya mean, they didn’t cater? We always get them to cater.”

I closed my eyes and tried to picture the credenza in the boardroom. I could recite from memory the items that should have been laid out, because we always get the same food, every time. But when I closed my eyes to conjure up a picture of the food at today’s reception, something was out of whack. I could see mismatched Tupperware containers, paper plates, odd and unmatched cut glass and crystal bowls, pottery platters, and very different looking food. I shook my head. The food today had been yummy stuff like brownies, potato salad, cold cuts, celery with Cheez Whiz, devilled eggs. But where were the chicken livers with bacon, mini quiches, smoked oysters?

“Who catered the food today?” I asked Jay.

“Don’t you ever read your e-mail? It was a potluck. All the employees attending the reception were told to bring something homemade. Orders from the CEO. He wanted a more ‘homey’ style reception. Even he brought something. We all joked it was probably some of Baby’s dog food.” Baby was Chris Oakes’ dog. “Vanessa reminded everyone in the e-mail about Ev’s allergy and we were told to avoid nuts and peanut oil.”

I vaguely remembered the e-mail and was flabbergasted. Potluck? Just who the hell did Chris Oakes think he was fooling?

chapter four

Telling Danny was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. He blubbered like a baby. He was late getting home because he had gone to a double feature at one of the old movie houses downtown. Jay stayed with him for the night and I went home.

By the time I got to my place it was close to three a.m. and I realized that no-one at the office had officially been informed of Evelyn’s death. It was too late to call anyone, but not too late for voice mail. E-mail was the communication tool of choice for all of our executives, except our CEO, who only ever used voice mail. The executives each had their new-fangled Blackberry’s and were glued to them all day. They preferred e-mail rather than talking face-to-face.

Our CEO, Chris Oakes, didn’t know how to use a computer, let alone e-mail, and there was no hope we could bring him into the new millennium and get him to use a Blackberry. He was stuck in the early nineties, in love with his voice mail. He didn’t use the system just to get messages, he would create his voice messages and send them to someone on our system. He did this all day long. Never once did he think of using the phone to call someone and talk to them live; he and the other executives were the same, never talking to people, just using electronic means to send messages - that way they could be tough guys without ever having to look someone in the eye. Our Chief Executive Officer sits in his office, creates a voice mail message, sends it to Vanessa his secretary, and then sends her another urgent message telling her to check her voice mail. They were all a bunch of gutless wonders.

So needless to say, even though we had e-mail, and most of the executives had their Blackberry’s, we were all masters of voice mail because that was the communication tool of choice for Chris Oakes. So I dialled-in to the office voice mail system and logged on to my personal mailbox. The nasal computer voice told me, “You have ELEVEN new voice messages”. Emphasis on the ELEVEN. If it were ten, there wouldn’t be any emphasis. For some reason, the computer voice thinks ELEVEN is a lot of messages. On a good day, Chris Oakes fires off ELEVEN messages in eight seconds. That includes time to dial all the appropriate numbers, clear his throat three or four times on the message, yell some obscenities, threaten to fire you, and hang up. Sometimes, Chris Oakes has been known to send ELEVEN messages to ELEVEN different people, and all of them consist of the same message. “Uh… Uh… Uh…” Wow. Can we quote you on that Mr. Oakes?

I decided to skip the ELEVEN messages and listen to them in the morning. I created one voice message to Chris Oakes, Vanessa Wright, Tom James and Harold Didrickson. I let everyone know what had happened. “This is a voice message for Chris, Vee, Tom and Harold. Just to let you know that Ev died tonight. She never recovered consciousness. I’ll see you in the morning.” Short and sweet. To the point. Jesus, I hate voice mail. But it’s great for us gutless wonders.

I had dropped my coat on the floor in the front hall as I was talking on the phone. Correction: sending a voice mail. I keep my phone in the front hall and refuse to have more than one in my apartment. I talk on the phone so much at the office that I usually ignore my phone at home when it rings. I don’t have an answering machine, call waiting, call display, three party calling, or any of those fancy features at home. Some things are sacred.

I flipped off the hall light and picked up my coat but was too lazy to fight the closet door so I dropped it back on the floor. I stumbled down the hall, blew a kiss to my most recent, and hopefully still alive, goldfish - Snapper the Fourth. I had only had him a couple of weeks and made a mental note to check on him in the morning.

I loved pets but the building super wouldn’t let me keep any in the apartment so I snubbed my nose at him and bought a goldfish. That was three years ago. I was on my sixteenth goldfish and I’ve had to change pet stores. They thought I was doing weird scientific experiments on them, I had bought so many. I am determined to discover the secret of keeping a goldfish alive for more than forty-eight hours, but it’s proven to be a daunting task. I have just as much luck with plants.

I filled the coffee maker and set the timer on it to brew at seven-thirty. I was going to treat myself and not go in to the office until eight in the morning. It’d been a long night.

I stripped off my jacket, blouse and skirt and left them where they fell. My bra, underwear and pantyhose got tossed in a corner. I got out a clean pair of white gym socks, put them on and got in to bed.

I groaned as I sank into the bed and let the goose-down duvet settle over me. My eyes felt like they were full of sand from all the crying I had done earlier.

I woke up drenched in sweat and my mouth was so dry my tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth. I had been dreaming I was lost in the middle of the desert, looking for Evelyn and calling out her name every couple of steps. My voice was failing me when I woke up.

The clock radio beside the bed read four fifty-five so I got up and pulled on my sweats and one of my dad’s old army sweaters that reached below my knees. I by-passed the automatic timer on the coffeemaker and chained-smoked two cigarettes while the coffee dripped through. My father would call this a ‘whore’s breakfast’.

I poured myself a coffee and wandered into my living room, and stood at the French doors which led on to my two square foot balcony overlooking the street. Things were pretty quiet at this time of the morning. I reached under the lampshade of the vintage tiffany lamp on my desk and pulled the chain and the light softly lit the top of the desk and the surrounding floor. I sat at my desk and rummaged around through the drawers to find the pictures taken last summer when Ev and I rented a cottage.

What a time we had. We laughed all day and cried a little every evening. We’d put on our bathing suits and go down to the lake and tease each other about looking like beached whales. I’m about ten pounds overweight and being the lady I am, I never asked Ev her weight, but I’d guess she was at least fifty pounds too heavy. We’d barbecue every night, hot dogs or burgers for me, and skinless breast of chicken for Ev. At least she tried to lose weight. After the dishes had been done, we’d fire up a couple of Coleman lamps and sit out on the screened-in porch and listen to the mosquitoes slam up against the screens. With our feet up and a fresh pot of coffee, we’d both eagerly dive into the latest Harlequin romance we were reading.

I discovered Ev was a closet romance reader just like me one day when I got a call to take over the reception while Ev ran an errand for the Chairman. The phones were quiet and I was rummaging around for something to read when I eyed a novel tucked-in beside the telephone console. The book was covered with a handmade, crocheted jacket which completely hid the cover. I opened it to the first page and starting reading. “Her green eyes sparkled and the sun shone on her auburn hair.” I sighed and settled down for a good read. Romance stories have always been one of my passions and one of my most guarded secrets. I made Ev promise she’d never tell anyone I read Harlequin romances. She laughed. “So the tough broad really does have a tender streak in her.” By the end of each evening at the cottage one of us would be snivelling over the heroine’s loss of her true love.

We had talked about renting a cottage for years and only got around to doing it once. We had promised each other last year on the drive back to the city, “same place next summer”. My eyes filled with tears as I remembered.

I couldn’t find the pictures and was only succeeding in making the desk a bigger mess than what it was when I started. Every drawer was jammed-packed with god knows what. My desk at work was just as disastrous but there at least I have a secretary who does all the filing and tries to keep it in order.

I was bilious now from all the coffee and cigarettes, and butted another one in the overflowing ashtray. I stood and lifted one arm over my head, slowly, and repeated the move with the other arm. My aerobic workout for the day. Sunlight was filtering through the windows but it was only six-thirty. So much for the late start I had promised myself. I headed for the bathroom and turned on the shower.

chapter
five

I shoved my parking pass into the card reader in the underground parking garage at the office and made a quick right turn. At this time of the day the parking lot was virtually empty so I had my pick of the unreserved spots. My parking pass was the one and only perk associated with my job and I treasured it dearly. At our company only professionals were entitled to parking passes, and the fact that Kate Monahan, lowly support person had one, really pissed off the masses. It wasn’t something I went around bragging about but one of the airheads in office management who had to give me the pass let everyone know.

When Harold Didrickson joined the company four years ago as General Counsel, he approached me to work with him and help him set up a new legal department. Until then I had been biding my time working for Shirley Benton as her legal secretary. Shirley was the only lawyer on staff at the company at that time and the legal department had consisted of the two of us.