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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.