Poles Apart (39 page)

Still no word from Mason Bennington. Lewis was off on Sunday, but as agreed, he popped up in the afternoon to do the interview for
Make-Up Artist
magazine. He reported that no one downstairs had heard from Mr. B either. After the interview, we went downstairs so I could take some shots of Lewis in action, making up the dancers, Shawna included. Two years earlier, the magazine had given me a fairly decent
DSLR
camera and I’d learned how to use it to a reasonably competent level. Lewis outdid himself and the resulting photos, particularly those of Shawna, were amazing. She was happy to let me submit them along with the piece. You couldn’t tell where the shots were taken. No one would know that Lewis’s models would soon be disrobing and then swinging on a pole before the hungry eyes of upper-crust men.

I called Dad to check in and Mom answered. All was well. They’d had a quiet day. Dad was watching a
NASCAR
race on
TV
. She told me with considerable shock that Dad wanted to handle the cooking that night. I asked for a full postprandial report.

By ten o’clock Sunday night, I was again exhausted. I was still processing Beverley’s passing. My way of dealing with grief seemed to be to ignore it. In theory, I knew she was gone. I think I even accepted she was gone. But was there something else I was
supposed to be feeling or doing? Was this the full extent of my grieving?

My last act before turning in was to write a few words of introduction to Beverley’s guest post and then to publish it on EofE, along with the obituary I’d written. It seemed a fitting tribute.

The next morning, just as I was about to head off to the airport, Yolanda phoned me.

“Your father has left a couple things here and there’s a package for you from Beverley that we found in her dresser. Can you come by?”

It was on the way to the airport anyway. Yolanda was at her station. She saw me and smiled. Then she grabbed one T-shirt and one baseball cap from the counter, both bearing Ford Mustang logos.

“I don’t think there’s any question about who owns these,” she said, holding them up. “They were in the laundry and came back this morning.”

I took the hat from her.

“Be right back,” I said. “Don’t go away.”

I dashed down the hall and out the door onto the grounds. He was where I knew he’d be, staring aimlessly into the distance.

“Hi, Kenny.”

“Hi.”

“My Dad wanted you to have this, but it was in the laundry,” I said, holding the hat out to him. “He wasn’t sure whether you’d want it or would wear it. But he wanted you to have it, anyway.”

Kenny took it and looked at it, nodding slightly. Then he took off the old, ratty Corvette hat he’d been wearing for years, and slipped on the Mustang cap.

“The Vette’s a way better car, but I guess this is a better hat,” he said. “Tell your dad, thanks.”

“I will. But you can tell him yourself, too. He’ll be back to visit.”

Yolanda was still standing where I’d left her. I took the T-shirt from her.

“Thanks, Yolanda. I’ll get this back to my father. But I doubt he’s missed it.”

“I doubt it, too. He’s got quite a few of them.”

“Thanks for everything, Yolanda.”

I turned to go.

“Hang on,” she said. “Don’t forget this.”

She handed me a package wrapped in brown paper. It felt like there was a shallow cardboard box inside. A Post-it note on top said “Young Everett” in handwriting I’d come to recognize.

“We didn’t see this until after you’d left.”

“Thanks. I don’t think I can open it right now,” I said.

Yolanda reached out to pat my wrist.

“I hear you, honey.”

I wrapped it in the Ford T-shirt and turned to go when my eye caught a glimpse of something in the corridor, outside of
what had been Beverley’s room. It was the pine box that she kept.

“Where’s that going?” I asked, pointing to it.

She sighed.

“We have no choice. With no next of kin, someone on the janitorial staff just comes and takes it away. I don’t really know where it goes. Doesn’t seem right.”

“You can’t do that,” I said. “Okay, Yolanda, if you just look out the window over there for one minute, I’ll take care of it. Are you with me?”

She nodded and turned quite formally to look out the window.

I walked down the corridor, placed the T-shirt and package on top of the box, leaned down, and hoisted the whole thing up. I managed to get my arms underneath it and rested it against my midsection.

“Was Beverley a blacksmith in her spare time? This thing weighs a ton,” I said.

Yolanda didn’t even turn my way but maintained her position looking out the window.

“No one knows what’s in there. She always kept it locked,” she replied. “Take good care of it.”

I made it to the car with only the faint first signs of a hernia. I opened the hatchback and slid in my precious cargo. No one had seen me walking out with Beverley’s pine box.

I dropped in at Dad’s on the way to the airport to return his T-shirt. It was about 10:30 by this stage. I rang the bell twice, then knocked twice. Nothing. I was about to pull out my own
key fearing something had happened, when I heard noises inside. A moment later, the deadbolt slid back and the door swung open. Dad was standing there, in his pyjamas, his hair looking like he’d spent the last hour in a Force 8 gale.

“Oh, Ev, it’s you,” he said. “Is everything all right?”

“Dad. I was about to ask you the same thing. Have a nice little sleep-in? It’s nearly eleven.”

I stepped around him into the condo. He shut the door but stayed in the foyer.

“So what’s up?” he asked.

“I just came by to drop off the shirt you left at the hospital. Yolanda called me this morning.”

“They didn’t find a Mustang cap, did they?”

“Oh, um, well, yes, they did, but I kind of gave it to Kenny,” I said. “Sorry about that.”

“Good idea. I got a couple more of them lying around,” he replied, while re-opening the front door. “All right, then. Well, thanks a lot, son, for driving it over. I don’t want to hold you up.”

Just then my mother peeked around the corner to Dad’s bedroom, and it all made sense.

“Geez, Evelyn, you couldn’t just stay in the room for another five seconds? I almost had him out the door,” Dad said, in a tone of benign resignation.

“I just wanted to see our son. Nothing wrong with that,” she said, emerging and smiling, the duvet wrapped around her.

“Well, isn’t this an interesting development,” I said. “I got to say, I was not expecting this.”

I gave them both hugs and headed for the car.

“I’ve got a plane to catch. Pardon the interruption.”

Holy shit. I certainly did not see that coming. I wondered if it had surprised them as much.

I’d pretty well made my mind up when she’d first raised it. It sounded perfect to me. Just perfect. But you don’t want to appear too eager. Just play it cool. So I said I’d think about it for a few days, which meant I’d simply delay telling her how excited I was at the opportunity before asking “Where do I sign and when do I start?” We were back in her office that Monday, just three days after the media briefing in the boardroom down the hall.

“First of all, I’m so sorry about Beverley. It seems impossible that she’s no longer part of this,” Shelley said.

“It was quite a shock. But perhaps it shouldn’t have been,” I replied. “After all, she’d been warning all of us that this was coming sooner or later.”

“I wish it had been later.”

“Me too.”

“Friday seemed to be a big success. I hope you feel the same way about it,” she said. “I thought you handled yourself very well. You completely surpassed my expectations.”

“Thanks. It was all so much easier with you and the heft of
NOW
behind it. It added a whole new level of credibility and put lots of reporters in the room. It couldn’t have happened without you. I’m grateful.”

“All right. Now that we’re finished buttering one another up, have you given any thought to the idea I mentioned after the newser?”

“Other than, you know, Beverley’s passing, I’ve thought about nothing else,” I replied. “If I were going to design my dream job, I’d stop because you pretty well laid it out for me on Friday.”

She clenched her fists and did a little upper-body shimmy in response. I assume it was a positive reaction and not some kind of seizure.

“Wonderful! That’s just fantastic. When can you start?”

We spent the next two hours hammering out a job description, the compensation package, benefits, vacation, a six-month plan, and of course what would happen to
Eve of Equality
. Shelley insisted that I maintain control of the blog and carry on with it just as I had been. She also said I could take one hour a day on the
NOW
payroll to deal with anything blog-related. She asked only that somewhere on the front page there be a reference to
NOW
and a link to the
NOW
blogs. As well, you would soon be able to find your way to
Eve of Equality
from the
NOW
home page. We also decided that in light of our little media briefing, the blog would now be called
Everett of Equality
. We even talked about the design. She suggested a graphic designer from the
NOW
web team could ink in the letters “rett,” on an angle, literally by hand,
next to the existing “Eve” in the title. So the look of the blog would be almost the same as before, except for this graffiti-like addition of the rest of my moniker. Of course, we’d add a bio page with my photo and a brief overview of my questionable past.

I didn’t care much about the salary as I planned to continue raking in the online ad revenue through the blog and, of course, handing over half the proceeds to
NOW
, as promised. Shelley gave me plenty of latitude in the job, which was nice, and rare. I’d report directly to her, which was also nice. We had the whole thing wrapped up in principle by lunch. She’d have the paperwork drawn up and emailed to me in the next few days.

“So, again I ask, when can you start?”

“I’ll need to get out of my apartment in Orlando, make sure my dad is settled, and find a place in
DC
. But that shouldn’t take too long. Could we say two weeks?”

I sat alone in a restaurant not far from the
NOW
offices. I was thrilled, almost overwhelmed. Without going all melodramatic, it felt to me like this was the job I was destined to do. This role was built for me and I was built for it. I just hadn’t realized it for a decade or so after university. But I’d caught up now.

But there was still one huge loose end I felt compelled to tie up, for better or worse. I dialed the number and hung up. I stared at my phone, waited for a few seconds breathing deeply, and dialed the number again.

“Mackenzie Martin. How may I direct your call?”

“Yes, um, I’d like to speak to Megan Cook, if I could,”

“I’m sorry, Megan Cook is no longer employed by the firm. Could I pass you on to the lawyer who has taken over her files?”

“She no longer works there?” I said. “Where did she go?”