Definitely Against Policy, page 5
Before she could ask a follow-up question, Eli put his hand on her shoulder. “Do you see the problem here, Mary?”
She nodded. “The ad shows a nuclear family. Mom, dad, a boy, a girl, and a golden retriever. They aren’t our target buyers.”
“Exactly. A silver-haired couple on a sailboat, a pair of gay thirty-somethings strolling on the waterfront with ice cream cones—anybody would be better than them. We’re not selling split-levels in suburbia. Mr. Cleaver won’t buy a studio starting in the 500s unless it’s for his mistress.” Thumbs flying over his phone screen, Eli texted someone and then took a photo of the billboard and sent that too.
“It’s Tuesday all over again,” he fumed as he unlocked the door. “I should buy us a cake. Make it all better with glucose.”
Eli held the door and followed Mary into the office. “At least Jonquil didn’t mess up,” he said, looking around the office. “Acquaint yourself with our new digs, Mary. I have a call to make.”
So bossy. Mary hung her coat in the closet, then peered into the kitchenette, now equipped with a coffee maker, bar fridge, kettle, microwave, and dishes, but lacking basic groceries. Maybe she’d make herself scarce. Slip out to buy the basics. Avoid Eli and his weird mood. Next, she checked the washroom. Someone, presumably Siobhan and Jonquil, had supplied it with toilet paper, lavender hand soap and lotion in ornate dispensers, plush hand towels, and an Impressionist print of the Champs Elysée. “Ohlàlà,” she whispered.
Mary walked over to the desk. In the opposite corner of the office, furniture had been arranged to look like a luxurious living room. There Eli was sprawled on a red leather sofa. Despite his relaxed position, he had a tense, angry energy. She’d never seen him in this mood. In the weeks she’d worked as a receptionist, he came and went from the Hill Realty office, ever quick with a compliment or a boundary-pushing joke, always cheerful, but never staying long. It dawned on her that she didn’t really know this darkly handsome, charming man who, before the age of thirty, had become Hill Realty’s top agent and was, therefore, likely worth millions. Now his current attitude made sense. He hadn’t succeeded through wit alone; he had to be ruthless too.
She sat in a brand-new office chair, swiveled to face the desktop and door, and pretended to be busy. She lifted the phone receiver to her ear. Dial tone. Flipped on the desktop computer. The Wi-Fi worked. Opened the drawers and found them filled with office supplies. And during her self-conducted orientation, she listened to Eli’s barrage and vowed never to find herself the target of his fury.
His voice was gruff. “Brad Stefano, please. Yes, it’s urgent. Thanks. Brad? Hi. Eli Klassen here. Yeah…the billboard. You’ve put a church family on the billboard advertising my goddam condos. I told you, millennials and boomers, enjoying their fucking lifestyle…Jesus Christ. A mistake? You don’t say…My billboard’s at Elmington Park?..What fun! No…Next week won’t ‘suffice’. Today. Change the fucking sign today or I’ll come to your office and personally cut off your nuts and stuff them down your throat. Oh, and while you’re at it? The Stephen Hill ads had better be off all the streetcars by the end of the day as well…I don’t fucking care, Brad. This is your mess to fix.”
Eli ended the call and tossed his phone on the sofa. For a moment, he closed his eyes and put his hands over his face. “Could you lock the door please, Mary? And switch the phone over to voicemail. Evidently, we’re not ready to entertain yet,” he said quietly.
Mary did as he bid, then sat in a cozy, pashmina-draped armchair. She crossed her legs and kept perfectly still. She didn’t dare say a word.
“I’m sorry you heard that. I should have stepped outside to make that call.” Eli opened his eyes and looked at her. “In fact, I should’ve dealt with Brad on Tuesday, because that way, today’s disaster wouldn’t have happened. He’d have learned his lesson.”
“Do you think he’ll remove the streetcar ads today, too?”
Eli gave her a funny look. “Yeah. Of course.”
“Then why didn’t you intervene on Tuesday?”
“Because I don’t like Stephen Hill. The guy’s a jerk.”
“He has issues. Addiction is an illness.”
“And I have compassion. I really do. But, you see, he cut me out of a deal last year, just before his latest hiatus, and I’ve lost patience. The cocaine sniffing and sloppiness I can forgive. Selfishness and deceit I cannot.”
“So you left me to twist in the wind,” Mary huffed. “Claudia nearly fired me over those signs.”
“But she didn’t. I would’ve pleaded your case if it were necessary. And here we are, Mary. In this gorgeous room, living the dream together.” He smirked.
“Not cool.”
“What’s not cool? I’d say things are working out rather well.”
Mary looked at her black leather boots that she’d shined especially for today and regretted having gone to the trouble. Not only had Eli spoken abusively to Brad at Out-of-the-Box, but he’d also revealed a Machiavellian tendency that she found off-putting, even scary.
“Are you sulking?” he asked.
“No.” She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Yes, you are.”
“Holy shit, Eli. I can’t figure you out. One minute you’re threatening to castrate a graphic designer and force him into an act of auto-cannibalism, and the next minute you’re teasing me.”
“Am I speaking with Brad right now?”
“No.”
“Correct. My conversation with him is over, to my satisfaction, and now I’m talking to you. I had to deal with Brad Stefano man to man because he performed poorly at his job and presented no credible excuse for why that happened. Now I’m sitting here with you, and I like you. I like you a lot. Your presence makes me happy and therefore my mood has shifted in a positive way. I’m not a mystery. I’m transparent.”
“Okay, Mr. Transparent.” She looked from her boots to his face. “What were you doing yesterday?”
“Recovering from a migraine.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes. That’s all.”
“Why did you ask me to lock the door?”
“Same reason the phone is going to voicemail. So we don’t have to deal with anyone until we’re ready to make a sale. We have brochures to collate, documents to review. We have to arrange cookies on a plate. Every single person who walks through that door must feel welcome and confident that we’re competent or they’ll take their shekels and run, and they’ll tell other people to do the same.”
“Okay.” She focused on her boots again.
“Mary?” He spoke her name softly, and her fiery indignation cooled ever so slightly.
“What, Eli?”
“Is it bothering you that I asked you to lock the door?”
“No.” Except it did.
“Okay, because on reflection, I can see how it might. I mean, the difficult phone call and everything. I assure you, I’m a gentleman and I’d never take advantage of a lady. You’re safe with me.”
“Take advantage? A lady?”
“It sounds old-fashioned, but where I’m from, a man and a woman who aren’t married never work alone in close quarters together,” Eli said bashfully.
“Where exactly do you come from?”
“That’s a story for another time. My point is that people imagine all kinds of crazy things.”
Crazy, wonderful things, thought Mary as her gaze inadvertently wandered over Eli’s lean, muscular body. “By ‘people’ you’re including the man and woman who are working alone?” she asked.
Eli shrugged and let her comment, which could mean anything to him, hang in the air.
What the hell was happening? Eli Klassen was now her boss. He wasn’t even her type. She preferred cerebral, older men. She had to get that proposal approved and reactivate her dating app pronto before she did something daft, like swoon in Eli’s arms.
Gathering her thoughts, she stood and went to the desk. “There’s no food or drink in the kitchenette. I’ll write a shopping list.” Jeez. How easily she’d fallen into the role of a domestic helper as if under the spell of his conventional, unevolved masculinity.
“Okay,” said Eli. “Rock, paper, scissors for the grocery run?”
Mary gave him an amused look. “You’re on.”
His playful nod to equality didn’t fool her. He was in charge, and despite her feminism, she was submitting. Willingly.
****
His rock beat her scissors and moments later Eli stepped into the sunshine, while Mary printed price schedules to collate with the brochures. They were nowhere near ready to launch an aggressive sales campaign, but he couldn’t concentrate. Instead of following up with Synergy on the delay of their model units or calling investors, he’d blown off half the morning discussing philosophy with his “protégé.” Conversing with Mary was like riding a spirited, poorly trained horse—exhilarating, unpredictable, demanding, and completely unproductive.
Working with Mary wasn’t…working. On the other hand, after only three days, he couldn’t imagine the alternative.
Eli walked through the sliding doors of Whole Foods and picked up a basket. They’d have to make up for lost time, push through lunch. He gathered the basics, then found the snack aisle. What would Mary like? Chocolate chip? Sandwich cookies? Coconut macadamia swirl? Damn it, Eli. What would buyers like? He grabbed some nut-free shortbread biscuits and social teas, cookies that never went stale, and added them to the basket.
And then to the prepared food section. A couple of salads, some chicken. Everyone liked chicken and Mary hadn’t mentioned anything about being a vegetarian, which she would have if she were one because it was often the first thing people on special diets told you. Some fruit-flavored sparkling water—women seemed to like those—and done. A good thing too because the handle of the basket threatened to snap under the weight of it all.
Through the checkout and back to the office. From a ladder, a man was already removing Stefano’s mistake.
He shouldn’t have made that call in front of Mary. He’d frightened her. Jonquil, Claudia, and Lori, all seasoned businesswomen, wouldn’t have thought him out of line. Maybe Jonquil was right. Maybe Mary had been sheltered. She’d caught a glimpse of how sausages are made, in this case, not laws or actual meat in a tube, but money and she freaked out.
He’d have to protect her while she toughened up.
****
After Eli left for the store, Mary opened the Word doc with the pricing schedule—basically a list of suites on offer, their prices plus or minus a few thousand depending on location in the building, and blurbs describing their features. Whoever put the document together had made several errors, and she set about correcting them.
When Eli returned, she was still editing. He put the groceries away and, without a word, hoisted a box of brochures onto the desk and ripped off the tape. He seemed annoyed that she hadn’t printed anything yet.
Mary ignored his little hissy fit and frowned at the screen. “Eli, who put this document together?”
“Claudia…No, I think Claudia liaised with Synergy and then she had her niece, Felicity, type up everything.”
“Oh, okay,” Mary mumbled. “I’d have printed it, but there were so many typos. Some a bit funny. ‘Walking closet, kitchen panty.’ I’m almost finished fixing it.”
“Felicity will be interning in your old job beginning in March.”
She understood the implications of his statement immediately. An incompetent niece would be a loose cannon and immune to criticism.
Mary pushed away from the desk and vacated her chair for Eli. “Do you want to look this over before I print?”
He sat, peered at the screen, and with a few quick keystrokes, declared the document worthy of paper and ink.
After that, everything happened as if in a dream. Eli could’ve left her to collate the sales packages. He could’ve taken off to do whatever it was he did all day. Instead, he set up an assembly line in the fake living room while she made coffee, and a few minutes later they sat side by side on the sofa, stuffing papers into brochures. It was a mundane task made fun with conversation.
“So, Mary Rose,” he began, “tell me about your childhood.”
“I’m the only child of a textbook editor and a sculptor, and thus I grew up in penury. My parents divorced when I was in middle school. I lived with my mother in an apartment where I remain to this day. A few years ago, my mother met a painter online who ‘understood her’, went to BC to be with him and the ocean, and my friend Dominic replaced her in the apartment. Which is great because Dominic is fastidious and amusing. My father’s second wife is his university sweetheart, who, fortunately, has not produced a second heir. And won’t at her age.”
“Why ‘fortunately’? Wouldn’t you want a sister or brother?”
“And compete for attention and resources?” She sneered. “Sorry. It sounds as if I’m bitter but I’m not. It’s all fine. I’m happy. And you, Mr. Transparent, who said your past is a ‘story for another time’. Here we are. It’s another time.”
“Middle child of seven kids. Three sisters and three brothers. I grew up on a farm near Lake Huron. Dad earns extra money fixing tractors and things, Mom stays at home and works harder than anyone else I know. My family and kin fill half the local church and school, which are more or less the same place because the Klassen elders do not trust the government to educate their children. It’s End Times, you understand, and only the righteous and repentant will have everlasting life in paradise after the horsemen lay waste to the earth. If the Klassen kids went to public school, we’d fall into sinful ways, so until about grade ten, I went to a private Christian school run by my uncle.”
“And after that?”
“I relied on Mr. Andrew Carnegie’s philanthropy in the form of the Eden Springs Public Library and the internet for my education. That and a little encouragement from my grandmother.”
“Wow.” Mary dropped a brochure onto the coffee table. She turned and regarded Eli with wonder. “That explains so much. So much that’s unusual about you.”
He said nothing. His expression begged her to tell him if what he’d shared was okay.
“They succeeded though,” ventured Mary. “In spite of it all. You seem, um, well-adjusted.”
“They fed me. I know where I come from. I’m under no illusions. My childhood was one very long, screwed-up bad hair day.”
“Wow.” She had to stop saying that. It was a word that shut people down. “I’m so impressed by you, Eli. Your knowledge of the world, of what makes people tick, and how things work. It’s very broad and you learned everything yourself. That’s remarkable. You’re remarkable.”
He shook his head. “I’m still figuring things out.”
“Everyone is. It’s the human condition. If we’re lucky, we stay that way until the day we die. Believe me when I tell you, you’re better at figuring things out than ninety-nine point nine percent of people. I teach philosophy to undergrads, so I’m able to judge.”
“I don’t know anything compared to you.”
“That’s not true. We know different things.”
She had to touch him, to find out if he was still Eli—Eli, the suave. Eli, the secular, and not an alien being…a batshit nutty, religious fundamentalist in a normal man’s clothing. She ran her fingertip over a pale crescent-shaped ridge on his wrist. “How did you get that scar?”
“Freeing a heifer from some baler twine.”
“Oh.”
He interpreted her lingering finger as an invitation and took her hand.
His hand was muscular, firm, and warm, a hand that could injure a foe or caress a lover. Sliding his thumb over hers, he looked into her eyes to confirm her permission and she licked her lips. She hadn’t meant to behave seductively, yet the slide of her tongue couldn’t mean anything else but “kiss me.”
Eli released her hand, brought his fingers to her face, and brushed a lock of hair from her cheek. As he drew her face up, she closed her eyes, intensifying the effect of his mouth on hers. In the silence, Eli’s kiss was everything. An exquisite everything.
She tasted coffee and man, and she longed to taste more. Slowly, tentatively, their tongues mingled. The kiss was unexpected, yet as natural as a dawning sun in the eastern sky.
After the kiss ended, Eli eased his arm around Mary’s shoulders and held her. They leaned back on the sofa cushions as one, her curves tucked into his angles, and there she reveled in the rise and fall of his chest, listening to his heartbeat, steady and beautiful as a lullaby. Neither spoke until Mary’s stomach grumbled.
“You’re hungry,” he said.
“Eli. What are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Let’s have lunch and figure it out.”
****
“I can’t have sex with you until my proposal is approved.”
Only seconds ago, that’s exactly what Mary had said. The words circled like a cyclone in his brain. She’d blurted it out as if sex was a trivial pleasure. As if she were vowing not to eat chocolate until Easter Sunday or watch Netflix until she’d filed her taxes. Then she said, “This is delicious,” and bit into her drumstick.
“I’m glad you like it,” he said flatly.
“I wonder how they seasoned it.” Mary closed her eyes and savored the food. “Mmm…I taste lime, chili pepper, some coriander.…”
Eli set down his fork. Why should her declaration feel so offensive? Like a slap.
She opened her eyes and looked sideways at him. “Aren’t you hungry?”
He shook his head. “Can we back up a little? To before your flavor analysis of the chicken?”
“You mean when I said I can’t have sex with you till my proposal’s approved?”
“Yeah. That.”
It still sounded awful in his head. They’d kissed for the first time less than an hour ago and now she was dictating the terms under which she’d sleep with him? He’d poured every ounce of his self-control into keeping his hands above her shoulders, into stopping with a single kiss, only to discover that if it weren’t for her vow, she’d probably have given herself to him. He wanted her, desperately, but he knew right from wrong. How a man should behave with a woman and how a woman should behave in return. A lady did not tell a man when she would invite him into her bed. That was something two people discovered together.
