He had to think like Bree was a monster wave, face her, take it to her, paddle like mad and then get the friggin’ hell out of there if things got too hairy before he got pummelled to pieces.
It took him all day to get his approach right. And even then the water was choppy. Bree was in one of the client meeting rooms using the table to compile a report that must’ve got screwed up by the photocopier. He watched her go in. He knew that room only had one glass wall facing a little used corridor and a door that closed. It was perfect for a private conversation. He went in and shut the door behind him and it was only then he realised it was also perfect for making someone feel cornered.
Bree’s, “What do you want?” was so sharp it could snap a leg rope.
“I, ah. Wanted a moment with you.”
“A moment?” Ant could almost believe it was possible to catch frostbite from words alone.
“Yeah, I wanted to ask you something.”
“I’m sure the door could be open while we have the moment.”
“Yeah, but it’d be better if it wasn’t.”
“Open the door, Anthony, you’re making me uncomfortable.”
“Why do you call me Anthony? Not even my Nonna calls me that.”
“Is that what you came in here for? I’m happy to call you Santa Claus if you’ll go.”
He sat and she said, “Don’t,” so he stood, but he towered over her, she was only a little thing, so he sat again and she said, “What’s going on?”
“Why do you hate me so much?” That wasn’t the question he’d planned on asking but since he was already in the water, he might as well get wet.
“Are you for real? You come in here for no good reason, shut the door, complain about me using your given name and want to know why I hate you. I don’t hate you. But I might start if you don’t leave me alone.”
“You really don’t hate me?”
“Ant.” She said it very deliberately. “This job is exhausting. I don’t have any energy left over to summon hate for anything other than olives and anchovies.”
He grinned. “You hate olives? They’re like chocolate in my family.”
“Well, there we go. I must hate you because you like olives and I think they should be wiped from the face of the earth.”
Ha, he hadn’t realised how funny Bree was. “You really hate olives?”
“I’d really like you to go.”
“Can’t do that. Haven’t had my moment. You truly find this job exhausting?”
“No, I find I can do it half asleep and skating backwards while knitting a jumper and whistling Sadie the Cleaning Lady. Yes, I find it exhausting. Now moment over,” she pointed to the corridor. “Get out.”
Jesus, she was funny. Funny beat icy and got to drink a beer with the boys afterwards. The moment was definitely not over. “I find it exhausting too. I’m going to have to give up my morning surf altogether. I need more time to get across it all.”
“You find it exhausting?” Bree’s eyes did a bug out thing.
“Shit yeah.” It was hard to tell which one of them was more surprised by what he’d admitted.
She got it together, freak wave quick. “Okay—I’m calling that the moment.” She did the pointing thing again. “Get out.”
No chance. “I have to ask you a question, Bree and you’re not going to like it, but since you don’t hate me, and I’m not about to force feed you olives, I hope you’ll answer.”
“You do know you’ve pretty much guaranteed I’m not going to answer any question you ask me?”
“Why?” He thought he’d done good at smoothing the rough seas. “I thought we were getting on.”
“Just because this is the longest non-work conversation we’ve had in a year does not mean we’re getting on.”
“Ah Bree, you’re a fucking snob.” And a bitch, but he was smart enough not to add that. Though not smart enough not to have caused the expression on her face; pinched like she was constipated. Now she hated him.
“And you’re an arrogant, self important, entitled, hyper-competitive, walking bag of pissed off, who can’t accept a woman beat him to the job he wanted.”
He stood so quickly, his thigh knocked against the table and sent a pile of her paper sailing off the edge. This angry she didn’t seem so small, as though her fury gave her height and width. But not enough to hold him down.
“I need to know about the bruise I saw on your shoulder. Is someone hurting you?”
“What?”
“You heard me. Answer the question, Bree.”
She leaned across the table. She pushed up against it and shoved it into his legs. She got as near to him as the geography of the room, its glass wall and its furniture would allow. “Fuck off, you pompous prick.”
It was hard to imagine anyone getting close enough to bruise this bitch of a woman. He no longer cared if anyone had. He opened the door. “Right then, we know where we stand.”
He left the room like she wanted. The moment was so over.
·
Ant could hear Jeff whining behind the door. What was taking Dan so long? The Valiant was parked behind the Kombi, and the garage door was closed which meant the Mustang was inside. Dan wouldn’t go for a walk without Jeff and he knew Ant was coming. He pounded again and called out.
That moment with Bree had worked on him like sunburn. He hadn’t even noticed it at first. But then it started to itch a little, especially the part about being arrogant, entitled and self-righteous. Then the sting started in when he thought about how she’d called him a walking bag of pissed off. By the time he left the office he was stiff with the knowledge he’d actually considered it might be her fault if someone hurt her and he’d thought that was okay. Now he was pretty sure her explosion of anger was a defensive response. He’d made her feel trapped, then he’d surprised her. He was a prize fuckwit. He felt like he had blisters of disgust all over him. He needed Dan to help pop them and peel all the dead skin of his foul lack of grace, consideration and arrogance away.
By the time he heard Dan in the hall, he felt like stripping off his suit and presenting himself already naked for the flogging he knew he deserved. He made do with taking his suit coat and tie off.
“Sorry,” Dan called. Ant heard keys jangling, then, “Move, Jeff,” then the door was open, and Ant knew what’d taken Dan so long. He had a freshly fucked look about him, screwy hair, heavy lids and half-dressed, a smile so smug it could rot your jaw.
“I’m interrupting.”
Dan laughed. “You sure are. I‘d have left you out here but Alex wouldn’t let me.” He swung the door open and stepped back, taking Jeff by the collar to give Ant space to move through the doorway. Alex was in the kitchen, fully dressed and brushed but her eyes were big and bright with left-over desire.
She said, “You’re not interrupting,” but she blushed the same shade of pink camellia his mum loved. She handed him a coffee. “Have you eaten?”
He threw his suit coat over the back of a chair and unbuttoned his cuffs to roll his sleeves up. “No, but I’m cool.”
“I can make you an omelette, ham cheese and mushroom?”
Dan sat at the table. “No, don’t feed him. This is meant to be a quick stopover. Quick, Ant. Like you said, you’re interrupting.”
“Dan.” Alex smacked the back of Dan’s head, then pushed her fingers through his hair and bent forward to kiss the top of his head. It was hard to tell whether Dan liked the smack, the hair pull or the kiss more. He grinned, like a satisfied bastard, whose girlfriend had just moved in. “Plan on getting indigestion, mate.”
Ant sat. Alex started on the omelette Ant wasn’t sure he’d be able to eat. His stomach was full of self-loathing. Old Dan, pre Alex, would’ve gotten him drunk right about now and all of this would’ve gone away. New Dan was less forgiving, but forgiveness was the last thing he needed.
“I fucked up,” he said.
“How?”
“Look she’s a prickly little bitch and...”
Dan cut him off. “You fucked up, but now you’re going to blame her for it.”
“Right. Shit.” Ant sighed.
“Start at the beginning,” said Alex. She waved a tomato at him and he nodded. He’d probably have nodded at having his balls removed if she suggested it. Except now he thought about it, Bree had already done that. She took his promotion first, then she took his self-respect.
He stood up. This might be easier if he was moving. “I never even got close to finding out for sure if someone’s roughing Bree up.”
Dan refilled his coffee cup from the plunger pot. “Why not?”
“She got to me.”
“You said she was five foot nothing and reserved.”
“Not that a well prepared five foot nothing couldn’t do you some harm, Ant,” said Alex.
“He’s a tree, Alex,” said Dan.
“So she’d be packing a chain saw.”
They laughed, but Ant wasn’t seeing the humour. It was Bree’s humour and then her anger that’d derailed him. None of it reserved. “She was different to what I expected.”
“What do you mean?”
“For a start she was threatened by me and then she was funny and kind of vulnerable and then she totally lost it with me. I never expected any of that. She was supposed to be all business, straight up and down and Frosty the Snowman.”
If Dan and Alex ever had kids, the expression on Dan’s face would be the one his teenager would come to know as the one right before things got ugly. “When you say you threatened her what do you mean?” His voice was so even, his posture so relaxed, but it was a party trick, masking his ability to have you skewered and writhing on the spike of your own dumbness before you even knew he was gunning for you. This is what he’d come to Dan for, the brutal stripping of his own defensives. Didn’t mean he had to give them up easily.
“I surprised her in a really small meeting room and I closed us in because I wanted to keep it private. She kept asking me to open the door but I didn’t. And since I’ve never sought her out for a private discussion before I guess it was threatening.”
Dan looked at Alex. “That’d do it,” she said.
He turned back. “You said she was funny and vulnerable and she lost it.”
“She was funny right up until she called me arrogant, entitled and a walking bag of pissed off.”
Ant thought Dan might laugh. There wasn’t an ember of humour in him. “Not vulnerable because she felt threatened by you?”
He had to think for a minute. He leant on Dan’s fridge. “No. She was vulnerable because she admitted she found the job exhausting.” He came back to the table and sat. “She told me outright I was making her uncomfortable and I ignored it, but she didn’t back down about it. Kept on telling me to get out and leave her alone. At no time did I pick her for scared.” Not even when she’d come at him, almost climbing on the table to get in his face.
“But for all that you still thought she felt threatened?”
He had a couple of seconds of think music while Alex put the omelette down in front of him. “I asked her if she hated me. She’s always avoided me like I’m diseased. One time she chose to stand up rather than take the last seat at a meeting table beside me. She said she was too exhausted to hate me, but the way she reacts to me it’s gotta be near enough.”
“What’s your role in it?”
He picked up the knife and fork. “I breathe.”
“Ant.”
“Look, I really don’t know, that’s why I asked.” He took a bite of egg and ham. “I thought I had a pretty good fix on how I played with other people, but lately I’m not so sure.”
“Wouldn’t be having an epiphany would you?”
He looked up at Dan and caught his smirk, but said, “Great omelette, Alex. Bree might’ve felt threatened because she knew what I was going to ask.”
“How would she know?”
“She knew it wasn’t a work question. She knew I wanted it to be between the two of us. She knew I’d seen the bruises. And she sure as hell knew I wasn’t going to ask her out.”
“So what happened when you did ask?”
“She fucking lost it with me. But not in some hysterical female way.”
“I beg your pardon, Ant,” said Alex. He knew she was objecting to his assumption that all females got hysterical. He dropped his eyes to his plate. There was ballroom dance teacher Alex, not to be mucked with Alex. The woman who’d turned Dan inside out and helped him re-make himself.
“Sorry, Teach. But you know what I mean. She didn’t shout or cry or carry on. She was calm. She told me plain and strong to get the fuck out of her business.”
“So it didn’t go as well as you might’ve hoped,” said Dan. “But this is fixable. You can pick a better approach, you can talk to her again. What’s really upsetting you?”
Ant put both hands to his head. “She’s so goddamn irritating.” He dropped them back to the table. “I stood in that room and I could see how she might push someone to hurt her.” Dan shifted, his weight coming forward. He was about to rip into Ant so he kept on, “That’s not the worst of it. The worst of it is I stopped caring if they were. I just walked out on her. What kind of a bastard act is that, Dan?”
Dan said the words, “And now,” and they were like an option in a contract. They came with conditions. If Dan didn’t like what Ant said next, things would get dead ugly.
He looked down at the half eaten omelette. “I’m ashamed I thought that for even a minute. And I fucked up bad because I made this all about me, about how she wounded my pride.” He pushed the plate away and stood up. He walked over to Dan’s fridge and opened the door. No beer. Probably just as well. “I’m only irritated by Bree because she doesn’t fall for my act and she took what I wanted. She deserves the senior analyst role, I know that. I always knew it. It just didn’t suit me to admit it. She’s got the credential for it and the skill.” He came back to the table and sat. “And she sure as fuck doesn’t deserve to be threatened by me or smacked around by anyone, ever.”
Dan reached over and pushed the plate back at him. “Eat. You need your strength; epiphanies take it out of you.”
Ant ate. He still felt scalded. All he could think about was how to fix this; how to get near Bree without making her so distrustful she was like a roller derby girl playing offence and defence at the same time.
When he left, hours later, Alex kissed his cheek and Dan walked him out. At the door he said, “I’m just a big loud fuckwit,” and it felt like a definition of the normal he no longer wanted to live with.
Dan sniffed a laugh. “Yeah, so was I. So was Mitch, till we met the reason not to be. Maybe you’ve met yours. And I don’t mean the girl. It’s bigger than that. It’s about what’s going on in your heart.”
Ant nodded. It was close to midnight and he was tired of this day. He wanted a shower and his bed. “What am I supposed to do about it?”
Dan slapped him on the back, in a place where the imaginary sunburn still stung. “I’m your fuckwit mate, I’m not an oracle. All I know is you have to be genuine and it’s something we’ll always be working on.”
Ant went home and stood under the shower till the hot water stuttered, but when he got into bed he couldn’t sleep. He got up again and fetched his laptop; he might as well check the markets, read a few reports as stare at the ceiling. He wondered if Bree did that too. Or did she leave the office and forget about it, did she enjoy her evenings with a bloke? That made him think about the bruises again. He opened an email. If he asked her again this way, it’d be done. And without the awkwardness of another confrontation he didn’t know how to manage.
He typed bre and her email address popped up. He thought about the subject line and typed A moment. Then he put his cursor in the message space. He wanted to keep the language as businesslike, as impersonal as possible. Maybe that way she’d overlook her personal feelings for him and react to the content not the context.
He typed: My apologie
s for disturbing and upsetting you yesterday, it was not my intention. Unfortunately I allowed my own feelings to get in the way. I do however feel the need to follow through on our discussion but rather than disturb you again in person, I thought I would ask my question again here so you can respond at your leisure. Or not, as you see fit.
It wasn’t Dan’s genuine and there wasn’t much heart in it, and it read like crap, but it was the best he could come up with.
I have noticed your bruises and I am concerned about them, about you. I’d like to know if there was anything I can help with in relation to that.
He wanted to ask if she was all right, if she was trapped in a bad situation and needed help to get out. He wanted to ask if she forgave him for being a big, loud fuckwit for the last twelve months and tell her that yeah, she was right, he was a pompous, walking bag of pissed off, but he was trying to get over himself. But mostly he wanted to ask if there was someone hurting her, and if he could lean on them for her to make it so she never got hurt again. But he couldn’t do any of that, because, well, just because. She hated him.
He hit send before he could think any further about it, powered down and tried to coax his scalded skin to sleep.
7: Sucker
Anthony Gambese managed to destroy Bree’s morning without even being in the office early. She read his email and felt a chasm open beneath her feet through all forty-two levels of Governor Macquarie Tower. Was he deliberately trying to wreck her life or just ineptly stumbling all over it? Did he not understand what he’d put in email was incredibly personal and deeply compromising, no matter how he’d tried to disguise it in officialise.
And what kind of a bastard act was it, given Anthony simply had to understand every piece of electronic communication in the office was stored for audit trails? It didn’t matter whether the email was deleted off their computers, it lived on in the firm’s servers, forever accessible, forever suggesting Bree Robinson was—what? He hadn’t put two and two together about roller derby or she’d have heard about it. He wouldn’t have been able to help himself. So, what precisely did he think she was—clumsy? And what did he mean by asking if there was anything he could do in relation to that. Did he mean to walk beside her and stop her bumping into furniture or...
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