by Terry Fallis
“Could you do a Flaming Sambuca?” I said. He blanched. “I’m kidding. I’m just fine, but thank you, Edmund.”
I dropped into a sleek leather chair, a few paces away, while he worked his keypad and headset. He turned away from me and spoke in hushed tones, presumably to one of my mother’s multitude of assistants. In time, he swung around and resumed his original front-facing posture at his station. He caught my eye and held up three fingers before mouthing a silent countdown – three, two, one …
“Ev honey, why didn’t you tell me you were coming, I would have cleared my schedule,” my mother said as she swept out from the corridor beyond the reception counter. And “swept” was definitely the right word.
She was dressed in another perfectly tailored “don’t mess with me” suit of deep dark red. And when I say deep dark red, I mean it in the true hematological sense of the word. A blazing white blouse and some kind of white and red patterned scarf thingy led one’s eyes up to her very attractive face and perfectly coiffed hair. Red pumps – at least I think that’s what you would call these high-heeled power shoes – completed the ensemble.
“Hi Mom, or should I say Mrs. Kane?”
She sighed.
“Here we go. Is it a crime that I just prefer the terminology Mrs.? Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first woman prime minister insisted on it. Why can’t I?”
“Mom, it’s fine,” I replied. “It just seems a rather strange concession to patriarchy for a powerful woman CEO to make. Besides, Maggie Thatcher, for all her groundbreaking and trailblazing, was still a supremely conservative woman.”
“So, nothing wrong with that,” she replied. “And she was also smart, tough, and powerful, and took no shit from anyone, man or woman.”
“Yes, all true,” I agreed. “Okay, well that was fun.”
“Yes, it was. Let’s move on,” my mother said. “Come on in. I’ve got a few minutes before my world comes crashing down on me.”
She took my hand and we walked down the corridor. It took me back to when she’d grab my hand when crossing the street. As we sauntered by, Edmund tried and failed to pretend we weren’t there.
“Wow!” I exclaimed as we entered the largest and most beautiful office I’d ever seen. If you pushed the board table off to the side, I’m sure there was room for a regulation tennis court, or at least badminton. Her wraparound desk was at the far corner, next to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking downtown Orlando. I remembered we were on the forty-third floor.
“Breathtaking, Mom. Just amazing.”
We both sat down on a white leather couch resting off the perimeter of a white shag carpet. Not the brutal shag carpet of the seventies. This was more like sheep’s fleece or perhaps a polar bear pelt.
“Yes, it’s quite nice,” she conceded, taking in the expanse and luxury of her office. “I confess, I prefer my Toronto suite to this. But this will do while I’m down here.”
“Where are you staying while you’re down here?”
“I’ve got a condo in that building over there,” she said as she pointed to another glass tower a few blocks away. “It’s the penthouse.”
“Of course it’s the penthouse,” I said. “As it should be.”
“It’s very convenient. Sometimes I even walk to the office.”
“Settle down, Mom. It’s a good four blocks away,” I joked. “How else would you get here if not on foot?”
“There are many demands on my schedule,” she replied. “A car usually picks me up. It saves time.”
There was a knock at the door.
“Come!” she intoned.
Two middle-aged men stood there, looking unhappy and a little frightened.
“Gentlemen, meet my son, Everett. Ev, this is George and Liam from Finance.”
I nodded. Then they nodded and looked from my mother to me.
“You may speak freely in front of my son,” Mom said. “What’s up?”
“Sorry to interrupt, Evelyn, but we’ve hit a snag on the financing,” George said.
“Yeah, Citibank is dicking us around on the rate. They’ve bumped it up a half point,” Liam added.
“Jesus Christ, boys, we had an agreement with them,” my mother started off semi-calmly but through a clenched jaw. “I negotiated that rate and it was a done deal. The rest of our financing depends on it. We’re not paying another half point. That is not on. Just tell them to forget it. We had a deal.”
“That’s what we’ve been telling them,” George whined. “But they seem quite insistent.”
“Holy shit, you two, get your heads out of your asses and grow some balls, for Christ sakes,” she exploded. She had jumped to her feet and the two finance guys took a step backward and huddled closer together. “We had a fucking deal! If they aren’t willing to honour it, you tell them First National offered us an even better rate, and we’re going to walk across the street and jump in bed with them. Citibank will be left with sweet fuck all. If that’s what they want, we’re happy to oblige. Just tell them that, and stop tiptoeing around those assholes. We hold the cards on this one. We are in the power seat. They need us.”
“Okay, okay. Leave it with us. We’re on it,” Liam said, as the two of them inched toward the door.
“And if they give you any more shit, tell them the next call will be from me to their chairman. Tell them that!”
“Will do, Evelyn. We’re on it.”
They both slunk out, bumping in to each other in the doorway and immediately started arguing in the corridor.
“Keep walking boys, I can still hear you,” she shouted, before turning back to me. “Jesus, it’s hard to get good help around here. I have to do everything my goddamn self.”
“That was quite a display, Mom,” I said, still reeling from the encounter.
“Why, thank you, Ev.”
“It wasn’t really intended as a compliment.”
She snapped her eyes onto me.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, you were kind of mean to them, weren’t you?”
“Look, Everett, I didn’t make it all the way to the corner office by being nice, and touchy-feely, and tolerant of idiots. You have to be tough. This is how business gets done in the real world.”
“I get the need to be tough. And I’m proud of what you’ve achieved. You’re a big-deal CEO. But can’t you get there without being rude?”
She smiled.
“Would you say that to your father, if he were CEO of this company?”
I thought about it. Good question.
“I hope I would, but, to be honest, I don’t know,” I said. “It just seems that men CEOS are often megalomaniacal assholes. It’s almost a stereotype. But I don’t remember you being like this when I was a kid. So I guess I’m wrestling with whether you’re just masquerading as a male CEO or if treating those two finance guys like you just did is who you really are, now.”
“You’re getting too Freudian for me. But there’s no masquerade. I’m just trying to do the best job I can. And that sometimes means raising my voice, stomping my feet, and reminding people that I’m the CEO.”
I nodded.
The silence hung between us for a few beats.
“Is your father getting any better at all?” she asked, at last mercifully changing the subject.
“I think he has improved in the last week,” I started. “The physios told me it would happen like this. He’d struggle for the first several weeks, and then we’d start to see some modest gains. I’d say we’ve just started to see those modest gains. He’s faster on his feet. He’s able to lift his foot higher off the ground when he walks. And he seems to be gaining some control over his left knee. And that news is hot off the presses.”
“Good. Because he still looks like he’s struggling, to me.”
“Mom, he is struggling. And a month from now, he’ll still be struggling. But he is getting better. And he seems pretty dedicated to his recovery. He’ll get there. Plus, the mobility and fine
motor control in his left hand is ahead of schedule thanks to how much time he spends …”
“Please don’t make another balls joke. Your father has milked that one well past its expiry date.”
“Mom, please. Give me some credit,” I complained. “I was about to say ‘thanks to how much time he spends exercising his hand muscles.’ I was just going to leave the rest to your imagination, without getting into specifics.”
“Thank you, honey.”
We talked for another fifteen minutes or so, but the CEO side of her life would not sit idly by for an extended visit. She had work to do, decisions to make, employees to berate, and a company to run. I gave her a hug and headed back home.
Inspired by my mother, I sat at my kitchen table and kicked around a new blog post idea. I thought I might write about the women who climb to the top of the corporate ladder by adopting, and then turbocharging, the same despicable behaviour employed by so many men CEOS. After more than a century of business hegemony, men become the role model for many businesswomen on their way up. To compensate for not being men, they crank up their own man-o-meter to eleven and, go figure, immediately start raking in the promotions. Sure, they avoid the glass ceiling but at what cost? I quickly realized I was enmeshed in a very tricky subject, nestled in a minefield, surrounded by a moat of piranhas and poisonous snakes.
I certainly didn’t want to impugn the success of women who have reached the top in a man’s world. Such achievements should be celebrated, not challenged. But a small part of me wondered whether their victories might be somewhat hollow, perhaps even pyrrhic, in some cases. Shouldn’t true equality mean that women can rise to the top as women, and not only as nastier clones of men? But really, who the hell am I to make such an argument? It was fraught. I sat there holding my head, trying to think it all through. Eventually, defeated by the complexity of the issue, I erased what I’d written. By that stage, my brain hurt. I decided there were plenty of other, more pressing, issues to tackle without questioning the tactics of the few women CEOS we have. Despite her performance that afternoon, I also felt some loyalty to my mother. Or perhaps I was just scared of her. That could also have explained it.
I grabbed a beer from the fridge and stepped out onto my fire escape to clear my head in the late afternoon sunshine.
“Hey, Everett, you’re blocking my rays.”
I looked down to see a young woman in sweats leaning on the loading-dock railing, reading a book. There was something familiar about her.
“Oh, sorry,” I said, and descended the fire escape stairs until she was again awash in sunlight. “Um, have we met?”
“Ahhhh, how soon they forget. It’s Shawna, Shawna Hawkins. You know, we met last night? Just a few short hours ago.”
I squinted as if that might help me remember her face. I realized the only part of the scene that was familiar was the book she was holding.
“Wow, um, you look so, well, different.”
“Gee, thanks. You know just what lines to roll out.”
Shit.
“Sorry, but I’ve just never seen Wonder Woman dressed, um, quite so casually.”
“Point taken.”
“What are you reading?”
She looked at the thin volume in her hand and then held it up so I could see the cover.”
“No kidding! A Room of One’s Own,” I said failing miserably to conceal my surprise. “Um, that’s a classic.”
“So what’s with the shock in your voice?”
Shit.
“Um, well, I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t expect you to be, um, reading Virginia Woolf,” I stammered, as one foot slipped into my mouth and started the journey down my throat.
“You were thinking I should be reading, what, G-String Quarterly, or Strippers’ Digest.”
“No, no, of course not. That’s not what I meant at all,” I babbled. “Is there actually a G-String Quarterly?”
“Not that I know of,” she conceded. “I was just messing with you.”
My cellphone rang in my hand. I looked at the number and didn’t recognize it so I just sent it to voice mail.
“So you’re working tonight?” I asked her.
“No, I just have a thing for loading docks. There’s no place I’d rather read. I come here all the time.”
“You’re messing with me again, right?”
“You’re a brainy one,” she said. “I work most nights.”
“Does he pay you well?”
“Who? The nut-bar?”
“Mason Bennington.”
“Right, the nut-bar whack-job,” she replied. “He pays us more than any other exotic dancing operation in the country. In fact, the boys at the National Association of Sleazy, Dirty, and Dangerous Strip Joints are all pissed at him for raising the bar so high.”
“I’m not surprised they’re upset,” I said. “You can always count on the NAS-double-DSJ. They’re nothing if not predictable.”
She just looked at me with brow furrowed.
“I’m just messing with you,” I said.
She smiled in a way that transformed her face.
“Yeah, well, no one is more pissed right now than the whack-job himself.” She nodded her head toward the door as she said this.
“Mason Bennington is in there right now?” I asked.
“Yep, and he’s been on the warpath since he arrived.”
“What’s his problem? Everything seems to be going very well for him,” I replied. “The luxury cars were lined up around the block, each one disgorging yet another hormonally supercharged jerk. I’m ashamed of my species.”
“Hey, those jerks are paying for my education,” she said. “The club is doing great. He’s happy about that.”
“Then what’s eating his shorts?” I asked.
“He’s mega-pissed at some blogger. There’s been talk of contract killings or at least a severe beat-down.”
Shit. Contract killing? Severe beat-down? Surely just a figure of speech. Yes, just a figure of speech. Uh-huh. I just stood there, taking in her statement, trying to process it. I always thought “knee-knocking fear” was just a clichéd exaggeration. I reassessed my opinion on the spot.
The silence reigned for a bit too long, and she looked up to see if I was still there on the fire escape.
“Hellooooo! Earth to Everett.”
“Right. So what blogger? Do you know?” I said this badly feigning a nonchalance I certainly was not feeling.
“No idea. But he was bordering on apoplectic,” she said. “Oh, and he also wants to knock off Candace Sharpe.”
And once more, shit.
“Well, I think I hear my phone ringing,” I said turning to head back up the stairs.
“You’re holding your phone,” she replied.
“Right. Well, I hear something. I’ll see you around.”
“Whatever.”
She waved at me before turning back to her book, and I bounded up the last few steps.
Most of my heart and my mind were consumed with the news that Mason Bennington would like to end my all too brief run in the human race. But a tiny part of my brain also registered that Shawna had used the word “apoplectic.”
After closing the fire escape door, I checked my voice mail and heard the unmistakable voice of Beverley Tanner. She always sounded energized, but I thought I detected an extra zip in her voice.
“Hello there, young one. I talked Billy, your dear stegosaurus of a father, into handing over your number. He gave it up, eventually. Well, Everett Kane, I gotta say, you are one interesting man. Now get your ass over here! We need to talk, now.”
CHAPTER 7
I had no idea what Beverley was talking about but felt compelled to heed her rather pointed call and head back to the hospital. Unfortunately, it looked as if I’d make it in plenty of time for what they called dinner. I dumped the remaining half of my beer in the sink. Just before heading out, I decided to check my Twitter numbers and the stats on the EofE blog. That might not have b
een my best decision of the day. I was soon awash in swirling, conflicting feelings of pride, excitement, anxiety, and something approaching terror. The already astronomical numbers were still in steep ascent. I had thought that my fifteen minutes of fame might already be on the wane, yet the viral spike had clearly not abated. Literally, by the second, more and more people were visiting the blog and following me on Twitter.
I checked the blog and noted 279 new comments awaiting moderation. Yes, 279 new comments. Okay. Calm down. Why the fear and anxiety? I forced logic and reason into my brainpan, and eventually, a more thoughtful pride at what I’d created eased into my mind. I reminded myself that, however unlikely this all was, this was what, in my wildest dreams, I’d hoped might happen. Right? I wanted to use my ideas, my words, my writing, to make an impression, didn’t I? That was the whole point, wasn’t it? Who really knows what impact I was actually having, but one point was indisputable. People, many, many people, tens of thousands of people, were reading my words. I shuddered, in a good way.
I sat there at my kitchen table for a few minutes with my eyes closed to try to centre myself, come to ground, as it were. I felt a little better afterwards and immediately scrolled through all 279 comments waiting to be blessed or rejected with the click of my all-powerful mouse. It didn’t take as long as you might expect. Twenty minutes later, I’d approved 198 comments, mainly supportive but not all, tagged 51 as spam, largely, no pun intended, from male potency evangelists, and rejected 30 offensive missives laced with enough profanity to offend even the most open-minded and tolerant web-surfer. Finally, I checked Technorati, a site that, through proprietary algorithmic alchemy, somehow measures the “authority” of blogs. It seemed that at that precise moment, Eve of Equality was the most trusted, most popular, most widely read feminist blog on the Internet. I closed my eyes again for a few minutes.
While I was at it, I logged into my EofE Gmail account. I decided I didn’t have time to scroll through all the email that had arrived since my last check-in. I was just about to close out of Gmail when one of the most recent emails caught my eye bearing the subject line: An invitation to appear on the show. Uh-oh. I clicked it open.