Suzie Read online

  *

  I escorted Suzie home every day after that; every time resolving to speak to her mother, and every time being warded off like some thing from the underworld. She did this so forcefully that I didn’t dare go against her wishes.

  Who knew, maybe she felt self-conscious about the mess in her house? Or perhaps, I mulled, her mother earned her keep in ways Suzie would rather not have people know? Had the little girl been warned off from telling anyone? And what of it? If her mother was one of those ladies of the night – or mid-morning, as is often the case – then who was I to disrupt the family’s income by sticking my journalistic nose in their affairs?

  Still it sat wrong. Sooner or later, I knew, that journalistic nose would get the better of me and I’d knock and drop in on that lady and ask a few interesting questions. Maybe a morning would be a good idea, while Suzie was in school.

  I was on my way to that area a few mornings later at eleven, well before lunch, resolved to find out what was going on there. Past Finch Park and down the busy Main Avenue; left into Narfington Street, and down past those colourful shop fronts...

  A car hooted at me and pulled up next to me. It was my boss, Jenny.

  “Tom! What are you doing in these parts?” “Following a lead,” I replied glibly.

  She reached over and opened the passenger door, and smiled her dazzling smile.

  “Hop in, Tom! You work too hard. I’ll buy you lunch.”

  Jenny had mid-brown hair that she wore in a chic French bob, and always power-dressed to perfection. She couldn’t know how often I had contemplated her slender, silk-stockinged legs for a photo-motif or potentially, starting at photos and ending at more; and how my insides turned whenever she bared her cute pearlies in one of her staggering smiles and turned her lights – golden-hazel, large eyes – on some unsuspecting victim to demand an unreasonable deadline from them. So perhaps I can be forgiven for swallowing my tongue, hyperventilating a bit and forgetting all about a pig-tailed little girl in a red dress to whom I had a walk-home-safely commitment. I “hopped in” and off we sped at stomach-churning speeds in Jenny’s little red bubble car, playing dodgems with the cars around us and drawing up, brakes screeching, at a nice uptown sushi bar.

  I swallowed a few times and asked then, “this is where you have lunch?”

  “I like sushi,” she stated as I scrambled after her towards the place that I would never have considered for anything edible.

  We talked and laughed, and I discovered that she could be a normal person too, not just a boss. It took me a bit to settle into this new concept. We discussed work, she turning the conversation this way and that with natural ease, discussing colour play, light, and the use of chiaroscuro effect in design. I realized just how versed she was on these topics. By the end of lunch I was sorry it was the end of lunch. I hadn’t tasted a single bite of the fishy whatevers they served here.

  She picked up the bill – something that was very uncomfortable to me, but I really couldn’t afford that sushi place, and after all it had been her invitation, and we walked to her car, still chatting easily. She applied some of her insane driving style, and only slowed down a little, a block away from the office.

  “That was fun,” she said airily, turning to me. “Tomorrow again?”

  My brain stopped for a moment. Yes!, I wanted to shout. But...

  “Can’t,” I said. “I’m working on a project. But – if you like – if you don’t mind – what about tomorrow night?”

  She laughed. “I don’t mind, you silly goof. Yes, that sounds like more fun.”

  “Tomorrow’s on me,” I still managed to squeeze in as she manoeuvred her bubble car into the tiny space between a sedan and a no-parking sign in front of the office.

  She swung her shapely legs out of the car.

  “So,” she said briskly, and it was as though a switch had tripped in her head, “back to work, Tom. I want your report on that eco project on my table today at four.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”