Doing Dangerously Well (10 page)

At 8:45 a.m., a woman with large, assertive breasts entered the room. She looked over her half-moon glasses at Barbara. A second pair of glasses was slung around her neck by a chain. She surveyed Barbara, then introduced herself with a firm handshake. “Dahlia. Poultry.” Barbara was impressed. She had a fine, operatic voice.

Then Jack arrived to head up cows. According to him, the bovine contingent represented the only “real farmers” in the group, and he thus insisted on being called “Farmer Jack.” He looked Barbara up and down as if he had never met her before, sat down on the opposite side of the room from Dahlia and started to flick through some livestock journals.

Raymond and Florencia traipsed in together fifteen minutes late, adding to the variety of manure laced with snow on the library carpets. The distinctive odour was now beginning to waft to Barbara’s sensitive nasal passages. Raymond, a jolly, round man with pink cheeks who smelled of the farm, was Barbara’s favourite. He spearheaded pigs. Ovines were managed by Florencia, a failed artist, musician and dancer who favoured
shawls, headdresses and bright lipstick that bled to her teeth. Her remit included sheep, goats and exotic ruminants such as llamas and vicuna.

The last to arrive was the least powerful of the group: the Director of Rare Breeds and Poultry. Norm Blacksmith was a drained individual with the pallor of dried grass. He had given up farming to take up the directorship, since which time, Barbara noticed, his weight had fallen dramatically.

She surveyed her trainees with an audible sigh, wondering how to calm the waters of hostility and prove to herself that her life had some worth, even if in small measure.

Throwing caution to the wind, she started with a bold exercise. “Write down on the strip of paper in front of you something shocking that you feel others do not know about you. It should have nothing to do with farming or animals.”

“Or birds,” added Farmer Jack, arms crossed.

“Jack,” Dahlia trilled, looking over her half-moons, “simmer down!” The omission of his honorific was not lost on him.

“Do not add your name to the paper,” Barbara continued, staring at Farmer Jack. “When you are finished, pass the paper to me. And remember, as always, nothing that takes place or is said here leaves this room. This must be a safe environment for all.”

As the six members began to ruminate, Barbara drifted into a reverie in which she was wearing African clothes, throwing herself in front of large bulldozers, demanding that dam building be stopped. Photographers were using long-range lenses to catch the action.

Ten minutes later, a hesitant Norm finally handed the last slip in.

Barbara scanned through the responses, shocked that her flock had taken her so literally. Nonetheless, she carried on,
hoping the exercise would draw the group closer together. She wrote the responses on the board.

• I enjoy the switch of the lash on my bare buttocks.
  

• I had sex with a contortionist.
  

• I went to Mexico for a holiday-viva México!
  

• I once had sex with my brother for a dare.
  

• I suffer from paranoid schizophrenia and once tried to kill my teacher.
  

• I am a vegan.
  

As her magic marker screeched each bullet point onto the whiteboard, the participants grew increasingly pale. At the last sentence, the entire group gasped in horror.

“A vegan? Thath’s ridiculouth!” Florencia lisped, her lipstick collecting in the corners of her mouth.

“What kind of aberrant behaviour is this?” Farmer Jack shouted. “A vegan? I demand to know who it is!”

“A deviant in our ranks?” Ned reared.

Pleased that the group had shown such openness, Barbara clapped her hands for silence. “Now I would like you to match up each phrase on the board with the person who wrote it. The person who gets most correct answers wins a pen inscri—”

“What?” Norm struggled for breath. “You didn’t say anything about guessing who said what.”

“There is no way,” Ned added, his miniature hand held up in a stop sign, “that I will participate in this exer—”

“This is highly invasive,” Dahlia’s voice soared above them all.

“Please.” Barbara’s lips stretched out into a small smile, head tilted to one side. “I think I know what I’m doing.” She looked down on them as a missionary might. “It’s vitally important
that we continue our work here. Now, let’s get going.” She whispered out the last sentence.

The no-brainer for everyone was Ned. Steadfastly single, known to proudly stroke the flanks and buttocks of his horses, he was pinpointed as Raw Hide.

Only Raymond guessed that Dahlia had had sex with anything, let alone a contortionist. She had to explain in twenty minutes of painful, tearful detail over three octaves before anyone was even halfway convinced.

And Florencia, the failed free spirit of the ovine world, had nothing more interesting to offer than Mexico. Her erotic paintings and lusty voice hadn’t even got her into an orgy.

Raymond, Dahlia and Ned plumped for Farmer Jack and the incest. Correct. It was “a long while ago” after a “drunken night” and a “dare.” Doubtful. He still lived with his brother.

A fight broke out as person after person guessed Dahlia as the vegan. In fact, it was Norm.

The biggest surprise for Barbara was that Raymond won the competition. As a paranoid schizophrenic (medicated), he was the most highly observant of the bunch.

After a shattering two hours of “bonding,” Barbara suggested they take a break. She worried about the prospects for Norm’s meatless directorship and, most particularly, about the weapons she had unwittingly put in the hands of the other participants. She was also somewhat desperate, since she calculated that her own prospects of future employment stretched to a maximum of twenty hours.

She needed to shift her focus to an area of obvious strength-i.e., conflict creation rather than conflict resolution-and so Barbara approached Dahlia. As a woman interested in the welfare of birds, although more on the eating side, Dahlia might be involved in wetland preservation.

“Dahlia,” Barbara adopted a more operatic voice without being aware of this shift, “I’d really love to work as a water activist. Can you help?”

“Well, although we’d be sad to see you go,” Dahlia’s voice trickled up and down the scales in a mournful minor key, though her eyes betrayed relief at this news, “I certainly have some contacts. Is there a field you’re particularly interested in?”

“TransAqua is going after rights to the Niger River. They need to be stopped.”

At this statement, the entire room erupted into an explosion of loud commentary. How could it have escaped her that every farmer would be intimately involved in water privatization?

“You need to try Drop of Life in Ottawa,” Ned piped up, nasal voice struggling with the n’s. “Now there’s an effective group. Small but effici—”

“What about that group in Santiago?” Raymond asked, eyes halfway to the ceiling.

“My dear, she’d have to learn Spanish. Do you know any Spanish?” Dahlia looked down her half-moons and over her bosom.

“
Sì. Un poco,”
Barbara said, with a flourish of Italian.

“Oh, very good. Is there anywhere else?” Dahlia asked herself. “Ah, yes. I know the exact spot. United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi. How about that?”

Barbara pictured herself in khaki, being fanned by beautiful men in chunky jewellery. On safari. “That would be perfect. Can you help?”

“I’ll certainly try either UNEP or any organization that requires your particular …” Dahlia lingered on a single note and then dipped into the last two words, “… skill set.”

“That would probably be UNEP, then,” Barbara replied. “I love Kenya.”

After a whispering manager fired her for her efforts three hours earlier than she had anticipated, Barbara crawled to the Center for Beatific Light, ready to rip apart the first breathing biped that crossed her path.

She was well pleased with the array of delights twinkling behind the glass cases in the vegetarian whole food delicatessen. Fruit curries, salads with leaves of the darkest green, exotic foods from forgotten regions, breads made of spelt, amaranth and rape seed-the last of which Barbara refused to buy on principle.

She edged in front of a woman dressed too brightly, with loud bangles, smelling of patchouli. Next to her stood an annoying cherub with no shoes on her blackened feet and little stars in her hair. They were taking a long time to choose the flavour of that night’s doubtless Ayurvedic cuisine.

“But Twilight,” the mother reasoned, “you liked this when we bought it last time.”

As Twilight screamed that she would refuse to eat any tofu with green bits in it, Barbara stared in shock as the child called her mother by her first name-something sounding like “nipples.”

Barbara edged in front of them towards a young woman wearing a nose ring, black lipstick and a blob of red, which Barbara supposed was a dot, on her forehead. “Excuse me, darling!” She commanded the full width of the bread counter with her spread-eagled arms. “Was that couscous salad made today?”

“Pardon me.” Bangles tapped her on the shoulder, clinking. “I was here before you.”

“Congratulations!” said Barbara. “When you and Nite-lite here …” she stared pointedly at the soiled cherub, “… have made up your minds, you’ll doubtless be served.”

Barbara turned back to the Dot. “The couscous needs to be fresh. And tap water please.” She emphasized “tap” with some satisfaction.

“Hey!” Bangles tried to ease herself in front of Barbara, who stared at her as though she were a thug.

“You really need to get to a meditation class, sweetheart. This is not appropriate behaviour for a child to witness.” After getting her salad directly from the chef, Barbara surreptitiously tucked the number for ChildLine into Twilight’s sticky hand, then turned on her heel. She slammed straight into the hermaphrodite from yoga class, yellow irises staring in disbelief, hands on hips, nodding in firm disapproval.

“What is it with you purplicious people?” it asked in disgust.

“We’ve got schedules,” Barbara snapped and bustled to claim a table near the window. She opened the blinds to give her retinas more sunlight to ward off seasonal affective disorder. In the process, she flooded two other tables with unwanted light and heat, oblivious to the loud tutting sounds around her.

A few minutes later, she noticed the hermaphrodite looking for a spot. Barbara’s table now had the only free chair in the room. She put her coat on it as The Thing approached.

“Is this taken?” it asked.

“Yes. ’Fraid so.” She wished to be left in peace.

The hermaphrodite raised its eyebrows and placed itself between Barbara and the sun. It stood there looking down at her, daring her to meet its eyes. Finally, it slammed its tray on her table. “I’ll get up if your guest shows up,” it said.

The two sat in sullen silence, chomping on their organic dinners.

Soon the mysterious spices in the salad wafted their calm through Barbara’s mind, and after a short while, her mood lifted. She broke the ice. “What’s your name?” she ventured.

“What’s my name? It’s Astroturf.”

Barbara’s eyebrows shot up. As she suspected, it had adopted a genderless name.

“Got a problem with that?” it asked.

“No. I was just wondering whether your parents were also named after garden implements.”

“Turf isn’t an implement. It’s a substitute.”

“Garden substitutes or plastics of any kind,” Barbara continued, crunching more of her couscous salad.

“Yours?” It drained a bottle of water with loud gurgling sounds as it looked at her. It had flawless skin, cheekbones from the Cherokees and the ease and grace of an African. Apart from the gurgling.

“Barbara.”

“Barbie.” It came up for air. “Great name!”

“No, not the great name of Barbie, but the wholly commonplace name of Barbara. I’d like it to remain that way.”

Yellow irises shot to the sky and a pouty mouth formed a pretty grimace. “Aw, man! You take the gateau, Bar-bar-a. You take all eight layers, man, icing and all.” It opened its second bottle of water.

Barbara sighed a note of invalidation. “So, what do you do?”

“I work with plants.”

“Plastic?”

“Oh-ho. Very funny. No, real.” It had olive skin, large piercing yellow eyes and long, curly hair—a mixture of corn blond and tawny brown—reaching its lower back. It was hard to define how many races had been brewed and bubbled to thrust it into earthly existence. Perhaps this ridiculous specimen represented all people, bound within a timeless geography and a placeless history.

“So, do you talk to your plants?” Barbara sipped some green tea, staring at the creature.

“Yes, we discuss the history of the Congo, Barbunkle. Do you also talk to plants? You look like the type.”

“No. I tried but found they were too argumentative.”

It stared at her for a nanosecond, then cackled, a sudden look of delight on its face.

“You’re very unusual-looking,” Barbara observed. “If I had to categorize you, I would say you’re beautiful-like a painting.”