Oonya Kempadoo - All Decent Animals

Angelica looked at Ata trying to find some confidence and sit up straight and decided that she might be able to do the graphics Roses Advertising Agency needed. “I know you never done this but what we need most is flip cards. Is easy, you could pick it up quick. What I like is how you trying something different with yuh own kind’a style. And I does give anybody trying a chance. Yes, Mira! Yuh still up and down out there. I said I would give she a chance!” she shouted to the open door.

“You called for me, Angelica?” the tall, smiley secretary said as she appeared.

“No, I didn’t call for you, Miss Fastness. This is Ata. She’ll be joining us soon, part-time. There we go — official.”

The girl smiled welcome at Ata. “Another female for the department.”

“Yes, I wasn’t looking for a man, I have a husband now, yuh forget?” She laughed rich and throaty and patted her piled-up hair vigorously.

Ata liked how this lady so plum vulgar and full of herself.

She looked at Ata square and hard. “Well, I giving you a chance. But is only part-time. You might get some other freelance work from stupid clients sometimes, I don’ mind. But you brave, girl — to come and live here on your own. Trinidad rough, it only looking so fancy and nice.”

* * *

Mid-morning Ata uses the gribbly lump of cow-gum waste to erase pencil lines. It is a satisfying thing, rubbing away blemishes to leave pen marks only. Clean, precise ink on translucent paper. Adding the final touch — a little circle, right over the alignment cross lines — like the target marks of a sniper. The same symbol when you look through the lens in the movies. Dead-on. When all three layers of artwork line up perfect over each other and the target marks come into alignment, she feels just as complete as the marksman might feel. Perfect shot. She bends over the template, relishing the rifle feel of the 0.25 steel tip, with its tiny ball gliding round the inside of the plastic rim. So smooth and quick. Neat.

The door opens abruptly and Janice bangs in as only she does, with her ugly poker face. “A special delivery for you, Ata,” shoving a big bunch of roses wrapped in cellophane at her. She takes in Ata’s shock, raises her eyebrows, and twirks thin lips in what could be a smile or a grimace of pity, then slams the door on her way out before SC can utter a sound.

SC flies across to Ata’s desk, exclaiming and inspecting the gift before Ata can even touch it. “My word! Who they from? What a t’ing! Atalaantaah…”

Even Claris creeps up close.

Ata had never received flowers from an admirer before, but guesses who this is from just as quickly as SC does, even as she opens the little card.

“Is him!” SC confirms as Ata reads to herself Can I see you tonight? Dinner? Yours, Pierre . “Who else would buy roses? And where he find so many roses here, anyways?”

Claris ventures, “Er, a florist?”

“I mean, who would look to go and buy so big a bunch of roses in the first place? A foreigner. A Frenchie at that — ooh!” She hugs Ata hard, crowding her up with her breasts and trying to get a look at the card.

“But how he knows where to find me? I didn’t…”

“You stupid or what? The man knows Fraser. That is what I call a hunter. Count them, I sure is a dozen. A local guy would’a send a bouquet. Or a single rose — a fake one at that.”

Ata knows what SC means by bouquet —one of those mixed-flower arrangements, with five different colors, leaves and sprigs stuck stiffly in a green oasis sponge, in a white plastic dish. She’s glad it isn’t that.

Mouse sniffs to see if the flowers are real and SC demands to see the card as the rest of the office tramp in, led by boss-lady.

“Romance!” Angelica announces. “How nice! He must have got the idea from the name Roses, ha! I like the man already. Who is it?”

Some of the girls think Ata should have some privacy while they join in the gossip-maco pressure. With SC leaning up on her, Ata has no choice.

“Is a white man she meet the otha night. He is a Frenchie-English, works with the U.N.” SC accepts the nods and raised eyebrows on Ata’s behalf and turns to face her when Mother Rose asks outright what it says on the card.

This time Ata blushes as the bunch of women squeal more ridiculously. They enjoy their Sex and the City moment of fun while she’s dying of embarrassment, thinking about the answer. Tonight?

“Is easy, of course,” SC explains after Mother Rose shoos everyone back to work. “You shouldn’t refuse. For what?”

Ata knows there is no real reason to say no. She wants to see the man. She stares at the imported flowers, peels back some of the cellophane, and touches the dark-red soft petals. They fall off in her hand. A bloom ready to expire. She agrees in her head, with SC’s ever-ready advice about accepting but not doing anything too rash, keep him courting, check him out. But she needs to know a little more before tonight. She asks her friend if she would call and take her around to see Fraser.

* * *

“But what stupid stupidness is this?” Fraser shouts at his secretary as Ata pushes on the curved steel door handle. “What he has to talk to me about? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know! Father McBarnette just said that he spoke to Father Gonzales, he’s been looking at the drawings and wants to talk to you. That’s all.” Unruffled by Fraser’s temper. “I mean, I can’t read the man’s mind over the phone.” Muttering softly, she packs up her desk for the day.

Fraser felt the waft of warm air and glances at Ata slipping in cautiously. “That’s what I’m talking about. I don’t know if he thinks he is God ’cause he building a church, or what, but he is always the problem. AFTER Father Gonzales and I AGREE on something, he has to come, ‘Why can’t this be like that? Do we have to have this?’ Come in, girl.” He snatches open the door to his office and leads the way. The secretary waves goodbye silently, grimacing, as she creeps out the front door.

Fraser flings a hand at the beginnings of a white cardboard model on his desk. He knew what Ata had come for. “Sorry. This man is a real pain in the ass, though. Father Gonzales is higher in the church than he, Gonzales could be the difficult one. But no. This is the third time now he, McBarnette, is calling to carry on about some major or minor thing. And then we have to talk. And then we have to meet. And I have to try to convince them all over a-bloody-gain. Wasting my time! My time is precious, you know. And expensive! I already told them I’m doing up a model for a presentation to the committee…”

“How you know he’s calling to change something?” Ata ventures, checking out the gray walls and angles of his modern gingerbread office space.

Fraser sucks his teeth and turns away. How will she ask? he wonders briefly. He watches her holding in the little excitement of her afternoon, clutching her roses, trying to take in his bigger problem. I will let her ask, he decides.

The cardboard building site of a church sits between them and the plywood base covers most of his desk. A curved wall stands erect on layers of terraced white land. One square column is the only other thing standing. Bits of construction card and paper are strewn about. A Corbusier book rests atop a stack at the edge of the desk. Photocopies of a curvy church are stuck to the wall close by, details of a dark interior with rectangle shafts of sunlight streaming in through holes in the wall. Fraser’s own deft sketches — a cluster of shapes, the single strong line of a roof among a tangle of black marker strokes — are pinned up too.

“What’s that?” Ata points at some contoured bits on the model.