Trilemma (13 page)

He looks back at me and frowns. “So what's the point?”

“Well,” I pause to remember, “there's an important job to be done. That's a large part of the satisfaction.”

Michael dances out of the house and grabs his mother's hand.

“Honey, go with Karim and lay the table for breakfast,” she tells him.

When they have entered the house, Sally looks searchingly at me. “I guess you don't approve of me.”

I let the false smile fade. I have been avoiding Sally. “I enjoyed going out with you guys, but I am just so busy.”

She bends down to turn on the hose and starts washing away the regurgitated truffle mess.

It isn't enough. “I can't afford to be drunk in public. Now I'm the chief executive, I have to be Caesar's wife as well as Caesar.”

“Poor little you!”

“Poor little me.”

Sally gives me a look, then returns inside the house and closes the door.

I try to ignore the feeling of loss and drive to the supermarket to replenish my wine supplies. I seem to be going through a lot of wine, late at night, by myself, where no one can see, and where there is no chance I'll do something stupid.

Later I pour myself a glass and climb to my rooftop terrace.

The wine is cold. The Jacuzzi is hot. There is a full moon tonight, but the clouds restlessly obscure its light. My body floats just beneath the surface. As the water gently caresses my skin, I can relax at last.

It would be nice to have someone with whom to share my triumph. Surely there'd be no harm in a little distraction?

I think of Luke's green eyes and handsome face. Out of bounds.

I think of Tom's tanned cheeks and perfect mouth. His strong brown hands. Doubly out of bounds.

Handy Nicholas?

I shudder. No and no and no.

Before I go to bed, I fish out the piece of wrapping paper that had contained the bag of chocolates. I turn it back and forth, but there are no sender's details and the corner with the stamp has gone.

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.

“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 feelings 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.