Flush

by Sky Curtis

  The crowd clapped enthusiastically. People nodded and smiled at each other and a buzz filled the room. Cindy was typing furiously on her notepad. Jack England was tapping furiously on his. But I, Robin MacFarland, was furiously fantasizing about my new sex life. As if magnetized, my eyes were glued to Todd Radcliff. How embarrassing. I was staring at his crotch. What was wrong with me? Now that I had decided to join the dating game, it was as if I’d lost complete control of my libido. I mentally slapped my wrist. Enough! I tore my eyes away and began to tap furiously, dredging up a replay of what he had said. See, I could do it.

  “The City of Toronto,” Todd continued while I tapped, “is free from a total dependence on the grid, which if there is a blackout, can paralyze the city, just as it did exactly one year ago, today. People will no longer swelter in their office work places if the lights go out. The system was ready in July, but the opening of the valves was delayed to this auspicious day in August, the one-year anniversary of the major North American blackout. This will help remind everyone of what can happen and how wonderful this green project is.”

  Clapping boomed around the auditorium. But Cindy and I caught each other’s eyes simultaneously, over the crowd of silly boys. She could do this easily, being almost six feet tall. Me? I had to lift my bum off the chair a few inches to see her. We were journalists and our brains were in gear, assessing what our ears had heard. If the power goes out, so do the computers and elevators. The city would still be paralyzed. Todd’s rhetoric was a little over the top and my assessment of him as a great guy went down a reluctant notch.

  Jack, the Times crime reporter, rubbed under his nose. Maybe he was thinking. Maybe he had allergies. Maybe he had a coke problem.

  Todd perhaps knew he was spouting bullshit because he smiled sheepishly. It was such an engaging smile. I touched my nametag, hoping to draw attention to it. He seemed to look my way. But then he really blew it. “The system has 60,000 tons of cooling capacity, which, for the ladies present, means it can cool 100 office towers or 20 million square feet of office space.”

  I bristled. How demeaning. For the ladies? What was this? The Middle Ages? The “ladies” needed more explanations than the men? I saw that Cindy was packing up. One thing about the environmental political types, they were political in every way. Do not feed Cynthia Dale red meat, admit to her you smoke, or sin of sins, undermine her brilliance by calling her a lady.

  I wasn’t going to leave the convention because of one politically incorrect statement. Cindy could get really edgy sometimes. I had problems with her various rants, but because they were rooted in the desire to improve the world, easily forgivable. But this could be a great story. Although I hadn’t been on the ball for a few years, okay twenty, now I was, and now I was smelling some good dirt. There was a story here. I wouldn’t leave because some asshole said “ladies.”

  Jack caught my eye and gave a rueful smile. An apology for all of mankind? Or was he on the make? Maybe he was being a shyster and wanted to know what facts I had on this whole convention. And why was he here, anyway?

  I immediately smiled back. It was a programmed reflex. Someone smiles at me, I smile back. Did that make me easy? Desperate? Too interested? I jolted my daffy grin into a neutral blankness.

  Todd was blabbing on, “It reduces CO2 emissions by 40,000 tons, or in other words it will take the equivalent of 8,000 cars off the road. It has the capacity to cool 8,000 homes. For now it is being used to cool the Metro Convention Centre, the Air Canada Centre, and several downtown office towers including the TD Centre. The system only uses the amount of water that is needed to meet the domestic water needs of the city. The coldness of the lake is not taken from the deep water with the resulting warmer water being pumped back into the lake, creating a destructive plume of heat. No, our system does not harm the lake in any way. I’ll tell you how it works.”

  I glanced over at Cindy. Good, she’d settled down again and was making busy notes about the environmental benefits. She’d gotten over herself. This sounded truly good for Toronto and, I had to admit, it was far more Cindy’s story than mine. Perhaps we could collaborate. This idea took shape. Maybe the byline would read “with files from Robin MacFarland.” I was trying not to be a failure and just maybe this story would get me out of that Home and Garden rut onto the front page. I wondered if she’d go for it. Did I have enough courage to outright ask her?

  “The technology has been around since 1980, in several seaside cities, however our newer technology is more environmentally friendly. In Halifax, Vancouver, and Stockholm, for example, sea water has been used to cool buildings, freeing these cities up from using expensive electricity to run air conditioners, but causing plumes of heat in their harbours, unlike our technology. Toronto, like seaside cities, is ideally situated by a large body of water. Lake Ontario is a very deep lake; less than five kilometers off shore there is a depth of 85 metres. Water at that level is right above freezing, at 3.98 degrees centigrade, even in the middle of a heat wave. This is certainly cold enough to air condition one or two buildings!”

  Todd laughed, but this time his laugh had a sort of tinny sound and reminded me of the forced soundtracks on sitcoms. I squirmed in my seat. He’d been yakking away for some time and my stomach was growling for lunch. I looked at my watch. Nine-forty-five. Fifteen minutes before the show was over. Perhaps I’d have a muffin with Cindy afterwards. To join the other ones on my hips. They could all be friends.

  “It works like this.” Todd ran his hand through his wavy hair. And still no ring. “Three parallel intake pipes run from the lake slightly less than five kilometers off shore. This is just over three miles, for those of us who, like me, who grew up before the country became metric. At this point the pipes are 83 metres deep, or 272 feet. The pipes have a circumference of 162.5 centimetres.”

  I looked around. It seemed that few people in the room were over fifty and would have trouble with the metric measurements: me, Todd, Cindy, and Jack. Jack with the smiling black eyes. Hmmm. Everyone else had never known the meaning of “Give him an inch and he’ll take a mile.” I would like to give Todd an inch just to see what he would take.

  “The water goes to the filtration plant on Toronto Island and then flows because of gravity through an existing tunnel to the John Street Pumping Station. This station is linked to a cooling plant below the Metro Convention Centre by a closed system energy transfer loop.”

  My oh my, those were highfalutin words. Did he know what that was? “Closed system energy transfer loop?” Whoa.

  “Here the coldness is transferred from the cold lake water to the cooling system and the water is then returned to the John Street Pumping Station for distribution to Toronto residents. In summary, the coldness of the lake water, not the lake water itself, is used to cool the buildings. The final result is cleaner air and cleaner drinking water.”

  I saw that Cindy was typing cheerfully. She recovered from her moods quickly.

  Jack caught my eye. Again. Embarrassing. I allowed my mouth to twitch upwards as I looked downwards. Seemed I could still flirt, after all these years. Was he flirting with me?

  “This is a wonderful green project which has terrific benefits for the City of Toronto and its residents. The water used to cool the closed system is cycled into Toronto’s drinking water. Because it is both from the bottom of the lake and travels through brand new pipes it is cooler and cleaner. As a spokesperson for the company and the keynote speaker of this conference, I would like to thank you all for coming today, the day we open the valves to the new coolest system around.”

  I silently groaned in mortification for poor Todd’s use of the archaic idiom. Coolest system? What? Were we all back in grade school? But everyone else happily clapped and looked suitably impressed. Maybe the word “cool” had come back in style while I was growing yet another chin. And then I realized I truly was a fool. It was a joke.

  A split second too la
te I laughed loudly. Jack looked at me quickly and then away.

  When the laughter died down, Todd asked, “Any questions?”

  Cindy’s hand shot up. “A great deal of energy must be used to run the pumps. Are there truly any energy savings?”

  Todd gave her the same look one might give a puppy that had peed on a rug. He sighed as he flipped through his notes. Cindy would be livid. I put him down yet another notch. “City Hall will use three million kilowatt hours,” he looked over his reading glasses at Cynthia pointedly, “less energy to cool that building alone, or the equivalent of taking 160 cars off the road, just so you understand. Any other questions?”

  I tentatively put up my hand, “I understand that the cooling system is a closed system and that it is not running at full capacity. But how will new users be put into the system down the road?” Good one, Robin. Clear. Intelligent.

  Todd chuckled, “They’ll tap into it.”

  Some men in the crowd groaned in delight.

  Geezus. First the car comment and now I was worthy of a pun?

  I straightened my shoulders and gave him the same flat stare I had given my naughty teenaged sons for years. “Exactly how?” I asked icily.

  Todd straightened up. Maybe he’d had some politically correct counselling from his company’s PR division because he had the grace to look embarrassed. “The cooling mechanism is serviced by an underground network of pipes and new users can hook up to these pipes.”

  I bent my head and tapped on my notepad. Someone else shouted out, “How does the cold water get from the lake bottom to the Island Treatment facility?”

  It was Jack. Nice voice. Commanding but not pushy. Soft vowels. Probably north Toronto. A bit growly. Deep. Even Cindy, the hard-wired lesbian, looked up.

  Todd answered factually, “There is a massive pumping station far below the lake surface, sucking the water into the pipes.”

  “Where exactly is this pumping station?”

  Jack again. Determined to get answers. What was his interest? What was he sniffing around?

  Todd gazed at the man ruefully, spreading his hands apologetically, and looking like a sad-faced Marcel Marceau. “I’m sure you can understand why that information is classified. No one knows the exact location of this pumping station except me as the president of Everwave, the company that created this project, the vice president, Mr. Richard van Horner, and of course, the captain of the vessel that was used to go to the site to install the pumping station, somewhere off shore. The municipal government also has a record of the location. The labourers who laid the pipe had no idea where they were, only that there was water as far as they could see.” He raised his arm as if to the heavens, indicating the vastness of the area.

  “Why the secrecy? Are you anticipating attacks on Toronto’s drinking water? Or maybe theft?” Jack asked the question calmly but pointedly, as if he were enquiring about the recipes for what were obviously pre-packaged appetizers.

  But Todd folded his hands behind his back and smiled nicely, scraping Jack’s question into the compost bin. Behind that smile, Todd’s eyes flashed with that same cold grey glint I had glimpsed earlier. He sidestepped the question by mini-genuflecting with his head towards his vice president, “If Mr. Richard van Horner could do the honours and open up the valves….”

  Jack looked down and typed for two seconds at breakneck speed. He was probably writing “No comment.”

  Mr. van Horner stood up in the middle of the audience and cut a dashing figure as he sprung up the few stairs to the podium. His lithe figure effused energy as he pumped Todd’s hand and was introduced to polite clapping from the audience. His clothes hung on him perfectly, as if they’d been tailored by Harry Rosen, and his tail coat flapped jauntily as he strode to a curtain at the back of the stage. I caught a glimpse of his tight little ass under the flap of his jacket. Now here was a guy I’d be interested in. Of course, he hadn’t opened his mouth much, okay, not at all, but still, really cute bum. The energetic Richard swept open the blue velvet drape behind the podium with a flourish. Behind it was a shiny length of black pipe running up the back wall. Half way up the pipe was a polished stainless steel lever, jutting out at a right angle. With a bow towards the audience and then with a grandiose gesture, Mr. van Horner pulled the lever down, symbolically opening up the valve. The crowd stood on its feet and clapped loudly, with some of the young men catcalling.

  Cynthia looked over at me and rolled her eyes. Boys and their toys.

  The “pipe” went nowhere.

  4.

  CINDY AND I MELTED INTO A red leather sofa in a Starbucks a five-minute walk from the ceremony. We had sunk into the cool leather, absolutely wilting from the short stroll. We sipped at a couple of iced coffees in the air-conditioned café to cool down. It was the middle of August and the pleasant early morning had turned into a heat wave that by the afternoon would cover the city with a shimmering, hot blanket of smog.

  “Odd to think that lake water could be cooling this café,” I said, my tongue licking the foam off my lips, making sure none was left in the newly discovered lines over my mouth, and took a nibble of my oatmeal cranberry muffin. I’d start on my diet right after lunch. “Pretty cute guys, huh?”

  “I wouldn’t notice, being of the other persuasion. And stop licking that foam off your lips, it’s very suggestive.”

  “Oh stop,” I laughed, bopping her one in the shoulder. “I know you’re not interested in me. Besides, it wouldn’t work with us. Never will, so give it up. I prefer playing sports with guys, like catching balls.”

  “Robin!” Cindy chastised me with her eyebrows raised, trying to look like a school marm. “Language! You know you shouldn’t talk dirty around me.”

  We scrabbled in our bags for our iPads. Now that our usual sexual banter was out of the way, we could compare information. With computers on our laps we shimmied closer to each other so we could see each other’s screens.

  Then Cindy sat up straight and looked at me, her big green eyes shining with sparks of indignant anger. She was stabbing her screen with her manicured red nail, leaving little fingerprint swirls on the glowing surface. “That guy, what’s his name? Todd? That guy Todd is such a sexist pig. Did you hear him say ‘ladies’ like women were helpless, drivelling fools? I could have smacked him. Ladies, my ass.”

  I ignored Cindy’s rant and read the screen where she’d jabbed. “But more than that,” I pointed at the text I was focused on, “Did you catch the bit about the city not being paralyzed in a blackout because of this new system?”

  “Yeah, what fucking bullshit. Of course the city would be paralyzed. How will the worker bees get to their desks with no subway system? How will they work with no computers? How will they see with no lights? How will they even get to their offices without elevators. What an asshole.”

  She was severely pissed about that “ladies” comment.

  “You’re adorable when you’re angry, you know,” I replied.

  But Cindy was relentless. “No, I mean it. The guy is a stupid talking marionette. A company prong.”

  “With a dong,” I rhymed, gleefully. I caught her look and smartened up. “But, the point I was going to make is that even without all the other stuff—like the computers being down and no lights in the washrooms—is that the buildings still wouldn’t be air conditioned. Oh, they might stay cool for a few hours, but the bloody system runs on pumps and pumps need electricity. How does he expect the water to circulate in his closed loop system without being pumped around it?”

  Cindy looked at me and nodded, “You’re good.”

  “Aw, shucks.” I batted my eyelashes, although secretly I was pleased. I could do this!

  “So, are we going to write this together?” Cindy was staring at her screen, moving some words around, trying to appear offhand, but I knew she knew what this meant to me.

  What luck! I didn’t
even have to ask her. It was being offered! My heart lightened at the possibility that this story might lift me off the Home and Garden pages. “I was hoping you’d say that. I need something new to do, and hooking up with another reporter is certainly new.”

  “You know I would do anything to help you, Robin. I know you’re acting like all is well, joking around with me, but your body language is telling a different story than your light-hearted repartee. There’s a subtext going on here. Look at you, hugging your iPad to your chest, hiding behind your gargantuan purse.” Cindy placed her hand on my arm, and looking closely asked me, “What’s up?”

  “Oh, nothing much.” I took a breath and smiled with all my teeth.

  She stroked my arm. “It’s okay, Robin, you can tell me. I can see something isn’t right with you.”

  I tightened my lips, trying to stem the tide of tears that was lurking behind my eyelids. “I’m an old, fat, alone, alkie, Fail-ure type of gal.”

  At least I remembered the fifth problem. This time.

  Cindy hooted. “You are not. You’re great. You’re fifty-five, the mother of four. That doesn’t make you old and fat, it makes you…” Cindy stopped while she waited for the exact right word to spring to her lips, “mature. And you are not alone, you have your children, plus me, your evil twin, and lots of friends to keep you company.”

  “But I do drink, you know I do.” Cindy and I would sometimes get together on a Friday night after work with our mutual friend Diane Chu and polish off a couple of bottles of wine between the three of us. Truth was, sometimes we’d get totally smashed. Then they would stay over, one in my spare bedroom, the other on the couch.