Free Hardly Working by Betsy Burke Page A

in the middle.
    Penelope smoothed down her calf-length black skirt and said, “Did you know, Lisa, that the introduction of sex education at too early an age has been known to cause trauma in adolescents? It’s been documented.”
    I smoothed my red leather skirt and said, “Did you know, Lisa, that too much pregnancy at an early age has been known to cause trauma in adolescents?”
    â€œAh, jeez…ah, c’mon, you two. Cut this out.” Lisa, on the edge of despair, looked back and forth between the two of us, imploring.
    Penelope continued to inform Lisa. “Some schools have grade-schoolers practice putting condoms on the fingers oftheir classmates. What a disgusting thing to do to children. Now, in my opinion, that is exactly like telling a nine-year-old to go out and have sex.”
    I looked Penelope straight in the eye, “Yes, but the message here is safe sex, Penelope, safe sex.”
    â€œWell, I’m sure you’d know all about it, Dinah, given your long and varied experience in the field,” said Penelope.
    Cleo arrived just before I was about to grab Penelope by the hair and knock some sense into her. Cleo pulled me by the arm toward my office, calling out to the others, “We’re going for lunch.” And then she whispered to me, “I heard all that. It would be so much easier if we were at high school and Penelope had just called you a slut outright. You know? Then you could just corner her in the girls’ bathroom, hold her head down in the toilet bowl and flush.”
    â€œAnd flush. And flush,” I agreed.
    Â 
    Whenever Cleo dragged me to lunch like that, it meant two things.
    Hunger.
    And she was seeing somebody new.
    When she wanted to talk about her private life she refused to go to a restaurant because she was afraid somebody would overhear. And for good reason. Cleo waded indiscriminately through the tides of men who washed up on her shores. Married, committed, or fit to be legally committed, the men that Cleo chose were safely designed for dumping when she grew tired of them, poor guys. But she had a special fondness for the high-profile married type, and she was right to be cautious. The thing about dating high-profile married men is that you never know when a low-profile wife in the know could pop out of the bushes or the woodwork, ready to reduce you to a pulp.
    But this day was a little different.
    Cleo gave me just enough time to grab a cup of dishwaterin a paper cup and a cardboard-and-pink-mush sandwich, and then drove us both up to Queen Elizabeth Park. We sat down on a bench and admired the autumn colors of the maples and alders for a second or two, then I said, “Okay. Tell me all about him. What’s he like?”
    â€œYou know all about him,” said Cleo.
    â€œSomebody I know? Who?”
    â€œCan’t you guess?”
    I didn’t have to think very far back. I could feel a heaviness in my stomach and it wasn’t just the bad sandwich. I shook my head. “Simon. It’s Simon. Of course it’s Simon. Oh, Cleo, you don’t know what you’re in for.”
    But she didn’t give me a chance to go on. She told me how warm he was and how beautiful, and that she couldn’t get enough of him, that she loved younger men and that she hadn’t slept because he’d kept her up all that night. I should have ruined her fun, right then and there, but I just kept my mouth shut because…well…I did more talking about living than actually doing the living itself, and I admired Cleo for being a doer.
    When we got back from our so-called lunch, Lisa said, “Hey you guys. You know there’s been another cougar sighting?”
    Cleo raised her eyebrows.
    â€œYeah, this time in the Spanish Banks area. Don’t know how the poor kitty got from Burnaby to Spanish Banks but they haven’t caught him yet. Careful when you’re out jogging, Dinah. He’s on your side of town