Hardly Working. Betsy Burke

talking to the world’s greatest male cynic.”

      “Well…there are some donors out there who respond better to the kind of image that Ian Trutch has. Maybe a little polish could attract more of the kind of donors we’re always trying to attract.”

      “Polish, Dinah? I don’t know. I guess…”

      I could see how troubled Jake was by all of it, by the suit that followed the lines of the perfect body perfectly, the chunky gold Rolex watch and sapphire signet ring, the aftershave that smelled like a leathery, wood-paneled library in an exclusive men’s club.

      I’d spent most of my dating life with Mike, who was gorgeous in a subtle downscale kind of way. But Mike was a man who had, maximum, three changes of clothes, the highlight of which were artfully faded jeans and a pair of expensive but battered Nikes. Formal for Mike was a clean T-shirt.

      It was the first time I’d ever been monitored and streamlined by such chic management. When I stepped back out into the main part of the office, I realized that it was a first for all the other women, too. The female energy was radioactive, buzzing out of control. The other women in the office were primed, and when ten o’clock rolled around and we trooped up to the boardroom, they were all ready to convert to his religion, whatever it might be.

      Ian Trutch strode into the room, stood at the end of the long table, looking around him as though he were checking out all the emergency exits, then he nailed each and every one of us with those blue eyes and said, “First of all, I know how you’re feeling and I just want to reassure you all that my presence here does not represent what you think it represents.”

      The tense expressions relaxed only slightly.

      “I don’t know what you’ve heard from the main branch, but I want it to be understood immediately that this branch and the main branch represent two situations and methodologies that are in no way analogous. Main branch is the administrative headquarters so it follows that it was getting top-heavy with administrative personnel.”

      Top-heavy? According to Moira’s version, it was the little guys who’d been axed back East. The people who did the legwork. The people like us.

      “I’ve been told that this branch is known for its team-work.” He smiled. “But it needs to be stated that the individual player, for the sake of the team, will be rewarded for any private initiative taken in terms of information exchange. In the weeks that I’ll be monitoring this office, I’ll expect the maximum effort from everyone. It goes without saying that if there is deadwood here, then it will have to go. It’s also possible that there will be no redundancies. I want it to be known that there will be no unnecessary suffering. So let me just finish by saying that I am looking forward to a fruitful collaboration.” He smiled radiantly.

      There was an audible group gulp. We weren’t sure whether we were praiseworthy or being judged guilty before the crime had even been committed.

      And then he launched into his strategy. It was all in code of course, full of very businessy-sounding words that had little to do with the way Green World International operated. Best practices, upstream, downstream, outsourcing. Somewhere around the word input I looked sideways at Cleo. She had obviously fallen into a fantasy involving Ian Trutch and a round of input, output, input, output…

      Lisa Karlovsky was sitting on the other side of me. She elbowed me and scribbled on a pad, “You following this?”

      I scribbled back, “Sort of. Don’t trust him.”

      She scribbled, “Don’t care. Waiting for him to smile again. Catch those nice dimples.”

      Cleo, who was on the other side of me, grabbed Lisa’s pad and wrote, “Like to see all dimples. Not just head office dimples but branch office dimples too.”

      For the rest of the meeting, I watched Lisa and Cleo watching him. The women were all working hard to understand as much as possible of Ian’s talk, but also to keep a euphoric expression off their faces, their jaws from relaxing. Except for Penelope, the little priss. She was taking notes briskly.

      When Ian had finally finished, Jake stood up and went over to corner him in private. Cleo, Lisa and I huddled together.

      Lisa whispered to us, “So. What was it we were supposed to understand from all that razzmatazz business-speak?”

      “Sorry, I drifted. I didn’t follow it. He’s so amazing to look at, to breathe in,” said Cleo.

      “I’m not sure,” I offered. “It sounds good at first, like we’re all supposed to be working together, but then you realize that what he’s really saying is that we’re all supposed to be spying on each other to see who the biggest slack-ass around here is and then go running to tell him about it.”

      Lisa said, “I totally lost track. I was imagining what he’d be like naked and horizontal.”

      “Don’t do it to yourself, Lisa,” I said. “He’s a complete vampire and will suck up all your goodness. I know because I called up Moira in the East and got a bit of dirt. Four empty desks, she said. No higher management. Just little guys. She couldn’t talk but I’m going to call her back and get more on him. We need to know the enemy.”

      Lisa looked woeful. “But main branch is much bigger, Dinah. He just said it himself. It’s a whole different thing.”

      “I’m immune to his charms. If I have to go down, I’m going down kicking.”

      Cleo smiled. “You take men too seriously, Dinah.”

      Lisa nodded.

      I shook my head. “He belongs to a win-lose world. You either have to be beneath him, or above him, and if you are above him, he’ll take you down. I know the type. The animal kingdom is full of them. There is no win-win here.”

      But Cleo was not discouraged. She eyed him hungrily. If she continued at the rate she’d been going, her sexual odometer would soon be into the triple digits. She was a woman who was used to taking men at face value, but taking them.

      “We’re not the only ones lusting around here,” said Lisa, nodding toward Ash.

      We all looked over at Ash who was watching Ian. She had a soft glazed-over look, never seen before that day.

      I said, “She’s got him where she wants him all week. He’s going to be in her office going over the books.”

      Cleo said. “She’s going to have human contact? Somebody’s actually going to talk to her face-to-face? It’ll give her a nervous breakdown to have to look him in the eye.”

      After work that day, Jake, Ida, Lisa, Cleo and I got together at our usual, Notte’s Bon Ton, a pastry and coffee shop on Broadway, just a few blocks from our office, to save the world.

      “Energy crisis? What we do is we exploit people power,” said Lisa. “Harness the energy of all those people who go to the gym to pump and cycle off all the fat the planet has labored so hard to supply to their necks and waistlines. We hook ’em up to generators. We don’t tell ’em, though. So they’re giving back some of the energy they stole from the grasslands when wheat was planted and the flour was ground up and baked into the donuts that they are right now stuffing into their mouths, right? Very cost efficient.” She punctuated this by sticking a cream-filled pastry into her mouth and wiping it broadly.

      “Sure, Lisa,” I said.

      “We go back to the horse and buggy,” said Jake. “Best natural fertilizer in the world, horse poop. And you drink one too many, your horse knows the way home.”

      “Windmills,” I said. “The old-fashioned Dutch kind. They could do something arty with the sails, paint them. Stick them out in Delta. People could live in them. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

      “Trampoline generated power,” said Jake. “Kids love trampolines. You harness that bounce, you could light up the whole city. Or that thing they do when you’re trying to drive across the country and they kick the back of your seat for