Free Waiting for Time by Bernice Morgan Page A

tack.…”
    On the way to the new offices Alice elaborates on Wayne Drover's career, the campaigns he has run for Timothy Drew, on his failed advertising firm, his failed marriage, his ambitions. The man appears to be something of a local celebrity.
    The space they have been given is large and airy. Lav points to windows, closets, the corner countertop already holding a kettle and coffee perc—as evidence of their new status, tells Alice she should be pleased.
    “I don't like the feel of it—never known anything to happen this fast—usually you hear about stuff like this weeks ahead. There's something queer goin' on—always is when the political people move in—and mark my words that's what they're doing. This space is too big to be just for support staff—me and Mark and whoever else we need.”
    “You're in that middle office over there,” Alice points to five private offices that open on the reception area. “It's a nice office—you have a window and some new furniture's already been moved in. Maintenance says that office left of yours is for Wayne Drover, the others are for Drover's glow boys—which means they'll be staying a while.” Alice suddenly notices her supervisor's newly groomed self and asks sharply, “Did you know about all of this?”
    Lav assures the woman that she is as surprised as anyone, quickly asks if they've been told who will be travelling with Mr. Drover.
    “Well, the Minister's not coining—thank God for small mercies! But Wayne'll have two or three of his own staff from Communications—Tony Mallard and Keith Laing more than likely—or perhaps that Chinese woman photographer he had with him last time.” Alice frowns but not, apparently, because of the Chinese photographer but because of someone called Melba Summers who Wayne Drover always brings up from the steno-pool. “Melba smokes—do you object to people smoking in the office?”
    Lav chooses to ignore this question, asking instead if Alice has seen Mark this morning.
    “There's something on your desk—a report Mark dropped off, told me he might be leaving the project.”
    Alice gives Lav another accusing look. This move, Mark's talk of leaving—she knows Lav cannot be innocent. “This'll be a busy week—it would have gone a lot more smoothly if I'd had notice,” she says before turning to a man who has come pushing a trolley piled high with boxes of their printouts.
    The office Lav has been given is attractive. There is no computer, no clutter. The shiny, black surface of the desk contains a telephone and a file folder—nothing else. Behind the desk there is a rose-coloured chair. In the opposite corner a small coffee table, a sofa and easy chair, also rose-coloured, have been arranged beside a window that looks out onto the cliff face.
    She sits at the desk and lays her hand on the file. It is quite thin, nothing is written on the cover, she has no doubt that it contains a copy of the preliminary report referred to in Friday's memos, that it will tell her why Mark wants to meet her after work, why Wayne Drover and his communication experts are so hastily descending upon St. John's.
    Eventually she opens the folder. Inside is no handwritten note, no explanation—just fifteen Xeroxed pages, ten of which are simply a list of references and data sources.
    Headed “A Preliminary Paper. From: Oceans 2000 Project, Policy and Program Planning, DFO St. John's,” it is addressed to “The Director, Science Section, Policy and Program Planning, DFO, Ottawa.”
    Lav speed-reads through the first five pages. Certain phrases leap up, “…a steady, well documented and perhaps irreversible decline in the size and numbers of cod landed in Zone PK3. In nine years the number of 3-year-old cod entering this area has dropped by half.…”
    “The practice, by Canadian and foreign fleets, of dragging the ocean bottom has destroyed vast spawning areas.…”
    “The systematic harvesting of spawning caplin to supply the vast