Fog, a Novel Page 13

  Myra noticed a nearby table looking at the menu to figure out which dishes we were ordering. The waiter, a Nepali man, eventually explained to them that I was the boss’s son and our dishes weren’t available. Not one to treat special privileges lightly, Myra smacked her lips while deftly unfolding the steaming banana leaves. I was amused by the torrent of vivacious energy with which she downed her dinner while ensuring that everyone in the room realized how satisfying she found it.

  The snowstorm picked up and a reconfiguration of drifts swirled past the windows. I looked out at it all. Nat was somewhere far away in the mountains while his mother sat with folded hands staring at the lamp outside his bedroom window.

  As we were leaving, I reminded my mother she had something for me. It turned out to be a box of CDs I’d been looking for. She’d found them stored in an old Chinese chest used for winter sweaters. She also gave me a sweater—I must have been fifteen when I wore it last—even though she knew it wouldn’t fit. Perhaps it was her way of reminding me of the boy I had been. I gave her a large hug that brought tears to her eyes. She quickly wiped them away. I promised to come by more often.

  Every time I say goodbye to my parents, even though I live in the same city, I hear a song with lyrics that say this is not the way it used to be, or was meant to be, either.

  Myra and I returned to my place. I pulled out the brandy from a shelf in the kitchen and poured it into two snifters. She looked at me and cradled hers in both hands. I saw her lips thorough the glass while she looked over the edge with wide eyes. She had a quizzical look that was at the same time apprehensive and guilty.

  “You don’t think he left because he was in love with me, do you?”

  How the fuck was I to answer such an unwanted question? Even though his letter had clearly stated it was not so, I wasn’t sure about it myself. Just then my bedroom radio switched on as it normally did at this hour. Joe Cocker, hoarsely obtuse, aphorizing away that there were too many rivers to cross. I went to my room and slapped the radio shut. Then I remained there, standing against the warm radiator.

  She called out to me. “Chuck, please come out. You’re just standing there, doing nothing. I know that.” When I eventually returned, she was lying down on the couch with her arms out. I smiled. I understood. I came and lay next to her. I placed my head on her black blouse right near the nape of her neck and kissed her. She smiled and then rolled over and held my head with the palm of her hands, very firmly. I closed my eyes and inside me I felt a rip. I didn’t know what was behind it and why it was happening to me. I could smell Myra and her chest was resting against mine. There was a warm glow emanating from her skin. It looked so polished, as if a thin layer of cream had been softly spread over it. Then she opened her lips and very gently slid them over my mouth. I smelled the wine, her perfume, and a faint wisp of Indian foods.

  I felt every part of her body firmly against me. She moved her mouth slowly all over my face and I put my arms around her. I knew I loved her, but I was also far away climbing a rock-strewn cliff where the wind had stopped and I was alone with no one around. Looking directly at me she said, “Kandahar will devour our lives. You’ll see.”

  Her lips and her words will stay with me for a long time. When she said “our lives,” I knew she meant more than the three of us.

  Her lips continued to move over mine, the tip of her tongue barely grazing over my mouth. The oxygen was sparse. I didn’t feel right. Something felt foreign, distant, and even unwelcome. No doubt I was still upset. The serpent had begun to coil. She sensed it and didn’t persist.

  We went to the bedroom, but the air was like a cast iron reservoir, a bottomless tank. When she fell asleep from the weariness of Merlot and brandy, I climbed out of the tank and slipped away quietly to sit in the living room with another glass. I pulled out my diary and started writing.

  I heard Myra snoring softly in the next room. I wanted to explain my loss to her as she lay asleep—that woman with the two names, two red lips, two looks and two perfumes—who insisted that she was not Spanish and who could totally surprise me by saying that Kandahar would devour us all.

  Eventually I fell asleep in the living room. Like a coil, again.

  In the morning she walked over to me, sat down beside me on the sofa, and said, “I know you and the things that trouble you. You are a compassionate person and you care for the world. I have never met a man who cares for the world so much and hears people out. I know your grandfather and Mrs. Meeropol have given you a lot of food for thought. They inspire you. And I know what Nat means to you, too, and it all makes you a special person. You know, there is a difference between chatting, flirting, hobnobbing, Facebooking, shopping for vegetables, holding hands, and even getting emotionally involved with someone and then meeting a very special guy like you. I care a lot for you. Don’t leave me.”

  She then got up and went to the bathroom.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Salvage

  There were three of us waiting in the room when she sailed in with yet another manager in tow. A doughy princess figure, she exuded an angry, front-grill arrogance, like she could not wait to run over, bite, maul, and flatten anyone who may appear on her radar. An antithesis to whatever that could be angelic or majestic. I could not help but imagine the worst about her. I imagined the worst, to amuse myself. A bleeding chancre sore in the mouth of a grotesque creature or an anaemic doctor, in a white lab coat, who wore tinted glasses and carried out research on psychotic drugs in a cellar. Or the rusting hull of a condemned trawler in a ship-breaking yard. It all appeared to me in one big rush, like a wave of revulsion that had somehow stayed dormant these past few months since I had set my coordinates on her. Her sun shades were on and her white suit only accentuated her malevolent Nazi-doctor image. A searing headache developed and I saw a thousand images of her, fleeting by and in some of them I saw Nat staring at her, ready to pounce. Ten feet away from me, she stood there—the woman who had come several years ago with the flower-bomb in her hands, and made me an accomplice.

  I half expected her to walk in, but I had also considered it unlikely. She was in charge of HR, why would she get involved with Logistics? I watched her closely. She wore the white suit like a lab coat, a silk shirt and a string of pearls around her neck. The hair on the back of my neck must have stood up because I felt cold air sweep down. She spoke with practiced authority, appeared younger than I would have thought. Her manager was a dimwit who nodded at her every statement. It was he who had noticed my background and suggested I head up a team to streamline logistic expenses. Had he shared my resumé with her? Would she not remember that I had worked at the same courier depot where she had dropped off the dried flowers? Had she come to check me out?

  Every time I looked away from her I sensed she was turning to watch me, and when I tried to return her gaze, her eyes shifted away. It happened a few times. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel tense, only disgusted. I was just going to lean back and take it all in slowly.

  Here was the project: too many carriers and brokers were registered on the supplier database. It was time to consolidate. She wanted a survey done of shipments into each territory during the last several years broken down into price-per-unit weight. She wanted a thorough job presented on a spreadsheet. The company had the odd practice of making direct shipments to certain customers, even though there were exclusive distributors assigned for various territories. I had already noticed this. It didn’t make sense. I was ready to bring it up but she mentioned it.

  “As a company, we’ve had conflicting policies. There are large customers who buy directly from us at a better discount than what we give our distributors, due to past arrangements.” Her diction was clear, but I couldn’t remember that voice when she came to drop off her package. She continued, “It will not be easy to overcome these legacy issues. Most stem from individual deals made long ago when we didn’t have such an elaborate network of distribu
tors. Also, in certain cases, these large companies have a lot of clout and prefer to deal directly, making large bulk purchases under frame agreements. However, it would be worthwhile to note whether or not they are also ordering small quantities at other times. That would inflate our transportation costs unnecessarily.”

  It sounded like she had already done most of the homework but was inviting a more detailed analysis. The manager, who had a Muppet-like countenance and was appropriately named Bert, immediately piped in. He started up a silly PowerPoint presentation in which a map of the world dissolved into a list of all the distributors in each part of the world. Africa had few distributors—most of the diamonds were coming from there, supplemented with only modest stock from Canada after all—but there was a flood of distributors in the U.S. and Canada, eastern Asia, Europe, and South America. The next slide was only the North American continent, with a range of statistics on the average number of courier drops per month in each geographical district.

  She leaned her arms on the glass-topped table as Manager Bert continued to bore us with his presentation. Every now and then she scribbled a few notes on a loose piece of paper. I saw her occasionally looking at me as I, too, took some notes. It was obvious that Bert’s numbers were summary and didn’t give any immediate clue as to how to meet the consolidation requirements.

  The meeting was shortly over. Manager Bert actually seemed surprised as he ran out of slides. Then he announced that I would be required to harvest the database and fill in the details. He wanted to know the weights that were being transported and at what cost and at what frequency. In fact, he directly repeated what Corinthe had already stated. She yawned visibly and stood up, dipped her head a bit to everyone and left, the clicking of her heels fading into the distance.

  I, too, rose. I noticed that she had left the scribbled sheets on the desk. I gathered them and pretended to put them in the wastebasket, but actually slipped them quickly into my pocket. She had just fucked up. I had achieved one of my goals on the first day of our encounter! Sweet Jesus! I was locked and loaded! Gerry Banks had specifically told me, “The first thing you do, young man, is to sneak out a recent handwriting specimen from her.”

  Bert was muttering to himself as he shut down the projector and picked up his laptop. He announced another meeting would be held later and that he’d email all of us further guidelines. I was last out the door. As I closed it I noticed a green glass dome in the ceiling next to the sprinkler; within the dome I saw a lens rotating noiselessly.

  I set to work in earnest. The logistical problems were embedded in the way the company had made exceptions along the way. Every rule had at least one exception, some had many more. This had all been exacerbated by the enormous list of suppliers the company was using. Each had different abilities, inabilities, and geographical range of operations. The net impact was that the dispatchers had too many choices: only specific and insider knowledge would allow one to choose the perfect fit for a particular assignment. Too often unexpected complications upset the customers who, of course, didn’t understand the reason for them.

  After a further week of researching and discussion with the team, I told the Muppet that we had worthwhile recommendations and would like to present them to everyone, implying that Corinthe should be present as well. Of course, the Muppet wanted a preliminary review, with which I complied. It was clear to me that what I had analysed and the solution being proposed was so out of the box that he would have a hard time trying to explain it to her. I had done a fair bit of regression analysis, using newer versions of spreadsheet software to predict that—given the current impact of cost variables—in two years’ time current practices would result in a further increase of costs to about 150 percent of its present baseline, mostly due to an increase of avoidable infrastructure. This would directly affect the selling price of the tooling products as well as the abrasive diamond dust and paste the company couriered throughout the world.

  I was being an analytical bastard, hungry for recognition in a hyena-chew-hyena word. Bert, of course, had little choice but to agree, given that I had stacked the presentation with compelling details of strapping costs, pallet-racking costs, forklift availability issues, warehousing consumables, IT support and telecommunications, as well as printing consumables and administrative support. It was a report designed to impress, and I did it to unashamedly raise my profile.

  The presentation was scheduled during lunch and sandwiches were ordered. The suspect walked in, and for the first time I felt terrified. She had forgotten to take off her famous sunglasses and wore a dress very similar to what she had worn years ago. It was meant to be intimidating. She looked straight at me and never looked away. While I tried my infinite best to stay collected, there were moments when my voice dropped. I cleared my throat twice and she even found a moment to push the water jug towards me. I said Merci! And continued.

  My solution was unexpected, simple, yet extraordinary. We discovered that the Empire was using nearly sixty different companies for local, airborne, truck, marine, overseas, continental, and national couriering. A new company had come up recently in Montreal called Fourth Party. Originally an Australian company that had specialized in consolidating all the requirements for couriering, including diverse types of packaging, transportation, and shipping, they would be a one-stop solution for everything. They would come to take the product away, package it themselves, warehouse it if necessary, and electronically handle all drop shipments, absorbing the costs that were encountered in personnel, tracking, administration, and delivery. In fact, the last operation in a manufacturing operations sheet would be to “call Fourth Party.” They would take charge of the product right on the factory floor at final inspection. Their costs were lower than the lowest we had obtained so far by an average of 10 percent, but more importantly, the internal infrastructure would no longer be necessary. At least twenty workstations could be dropped.

  During our team’s investigations, we discovered that at least ten times during any month courier companies would come and either wait long hours or get fed up and leave. This was often due to a palette that couldn’t be moved the last hundred feet owing to the non-availability of busy forklifts. Fourth Party would come with their own forklifts and their own laptops that interfaced with the company’s Enterprise Planning System. They would also initiate a follow-up software that automatically latched on to progress reports by Radio Frequency and GPS devices to provide automatic updates at the planner’s desk. In other words, to make it simple, sixty different companies could be replaced by one. They had already made several frame agreements with smaller companies. Our suggestion was a no-brainer. She stared at me again for a while, and then suddenly said, “Looks like you know a lot about couriering.” Then the meeting was adjourned. As I was just about to leave the room, she asked me to follow her.

  I walked behind her down the long corridor. She invited me into her office for coffee and closed the door behind us. She sat down on the edge of her brown leather-topped, exquisitely ornate and immaculate desk and asked me to sit down. Her legs were crossed, and I think I saw a trace of a smile on her enormously luscious lips. That fucker chiro Roberge must have been biting and sucking them while she folded her tongue and swept the insides of his mouth like a cobra in heat.

  “I noticed you worked at the Deltafly courier company on the Main.” She had me down. Was she going to frisk me to see if I was wired? “How long were you there?”

  “Nearly ten years. Great company. Less complicated work, of course!” I felt composed and unintimidated.

  “I think I’ve been there a few times, but I don’t remember seeing you.” She was pushing buttons!

  “I don’t remember seeing you either, but then I was handling over eight to ten customers per hour, and it would also depend on when you came. I often worked at night. When were you last there?” No tremor or hesitation in my voice as I openly lied about the night shift. She did not respond t
o my question. She slid off the table and went to a corner of the room and poured herself a cup of tea and then came around to her chair and sat down. She didn’t offer me anything, even though initially she had asked that I join her for some coffee.

  “Did you by any chance pick up some notes I left behind in our first meeting? I think I left them on the desk.” Oh, hell! She really did have me. Of course, the green dome on the ceiling. “I went back to look for them and they weren’t there.”

  “Maybe Bert picked them up?” I offered.

  She just ignored my answer. “Look, you did a good job and the outsourcing idea is great. Unfortunately, I don’t think it will work. Many of the suppliers you want to sideline were actually financed at one time by my father and they’d be upset to be shunted aside. I also know my dad is not going to like it. They will talk to him for sure. But I like the work you did. I’m going to talk to him and see if we can make a compromise. This was a good suggestion, so thanks.”

  She had her arms folded and wasn’t about to shake my hand. I thanked her in return, got up quickly and left the room. Bert, the goof, was waiting outside. I turned around and took one more look. Her arms were still crossed, but she had lowered her head.

  That same evening, my old boss from the courier company called to say that an HR firm had called “for references.” It was, I thought, a bit late in the process, but I didn’t say anything. She had told them I was a great guy, always on my feet, on top of details and a good team worker. I thanked her for her kind support. “You know, Chuck, mon ami,” she had said at the end, “you can come back any time.” I told her it wouldn’t be necessary.