CHAPTER 3

Christoph sat, staring at his desk phone.  His brain was working, but his mind was not.  None of his thoughts made sense to him. Ursula was back, even though he’d told her over the phone that he didn’t want to try again.  They’d been apart longer than they had been together, with little contact during the two year separation. 

But now she was back. Waiting in the apartment for him; wanting to put things right. But he knew there was nothing right about him and Ursula. Their relationship had never been right. How can you make something so wrong, right? He asked himself.

Suddenly, as if the question had been a power shot, he stood up, walked to the window and looked down onto the street.  Weather Scope’s, Madison Avenue location  was a fine piece of real estate, but tonight he would give it away for a ten minute telephone conversation with Claudia.

He was staring at the scene playing out below when the phone on his desk rang.  He felt an internal rush of chemicals. A toxic brew induced by shock, fear and anger. The piercing ring was trying to break through the fog barrier in his head, but his brain refused to send the necessary signals to his legs, arms and voice. He stood paralysed, tears his only reaction.  The phone continued its vicious assault.  Christoph felt nothing. Yet the tears kept falling.

Audio chaos was replaced with silence.  Not a slow transition, it was instant. Leaving Christoph with the feeling that the room was being pushed into space, to drift around in a void.  Then with the tenderness of a child hugging a puppy, his emotions began to flow again, and ever so gently, love bathed him in hope again. It was a feeling stronger than the magnetic pull of the moon on the tides.  He felt energy flowing back into his veins.

He turned slowly from the window and with unsteady feet, returned to the desk and lowered himself into the security and comfort of the leather chair. The phone rang again, but this time he reached over and plucked the handset from its cradle. ‘Hi this is Christoph.’ His voice was strong again, but for a second he wondered if he was crazy. Surely, only the insane, move from despair to hope so quickly. The mentally alert did it much more slowly. Normal people moved through stages of grief and happiness, and they sent out clear signals to show others where they were at. Well that’s how he imagined normal people behaved. ‘Thomas? Good to hear from you.  How’s it going down-under?’

‘Not bad. Not bad at all.  We’ll have the calcs done pretty soon, and then with the help of an army of keyboard Olympians, the reports should be finished by two am, our time.’ Thomas sounded confident and relieved to be making the announcement. ‘Claudia has everything set for the documents to take off at eight in the morning.’

‘Good.’ Christoph swallowed hard to clear a passage for his words to flow through. ‘Good’, he repeated. ‘So how’s everyone coping with the pressure?’ He did care how all his colleagues were holding up under the strain, but he didn’t kid himself that his desire to know how Claudia was coping, emotionally and physically was the true reason for asking. Claudia had, single-handedly, brokered the deal. She had to be exhausted. Was anyone taking care of her?  Was she eating? Was she getting any rest?

All silly questions; he knew she wouldn’t rest until every task had been completed, and every staffer had been despatched into the arms of their loved ones.  Then, and only then, would she kick off her heels, remove her jacket, and sink into her beautiful white leather chair.  The chair they’d chosen together.  Not because she actually needed a new chair, but because she wanted a physical signpost to mark the day they pledged their love … to each other.

He recalled her saying an office chair was a perfect purchase, because it would gently embrace her every time she settled into it.  She said its whiteness symbolised the purity of their love and it was something she would use every day.

Yes, he told himself, when everyone had left the office. When she was finally alone, she would give her body up to the chair’s embrace. He could see her doing it. Her hair would fall a little to one side as she settled herself into the soft creamy leather. He knew the expression she’d have on her face, as she checked the To Do list Sarah would have left on her desk before she went home. Then Claudia would tell her brain she was signing off for a while. That’s when pleasure and contentment would sweep through her body.

His memory allowed him to savour her voice, letting the stored recording of her inflections and verbal nuances float around in his head. The corners of his mouth hinted at a smile as he dredged up a memorised version of a high-fidelity audio file she’d sent him a few months after their two companies formed their alliance.

As the CEO he’d been involved in stage one of the agreement development. He’d vetted all the responses to the Expression of Interest, but due to a special assignment in Europe, he was not involved in the interviewing process. These were conducted by the Vice-President and two other directors. They made the final selection and put an offer to Claudia McBride and her Australian team.

The two companies had been working together for about six weeks before Christoph had any direct contact with her. Although, of course, he was regularly updated on how things were progressing; all the feed-back was excellent. 

From her first day on the job Claudia had made a difference. Her warm disposition, and her special brand of humour, made her extremely popular. On his return, Christoph was intrigued by the grapevine stories he heard. His curiosity was greatly aroused when he heard the younger New York staffers assessment. They said she was one, seriously smart, super cool chick.

His memory bathed him in the sound of her beautifully modulated voice, with its slight British accent (acquired, she told him later, from her very British elocution teacher, her mother engaged to tutor her from around the age of ten. The lessons were intended to correct a childhood lisp). A faint smile creased the corners of his mouth as he recalled the welcome back message she’d left on his voice mail. She assured him she and her Australian team were delighted to be working with him.

‘Hi there Christoph, it’s me Claudia’ she said cheerfully, ‘I hope I have the pronunciation right.  If you could hear how most people here at EcoLogic massacre the cadences of your beautiful European name, you would react in one of two ways. Either you simply would not recognise the sound as your name, and therefore you would not respond.  Or you would be so offended by the language-terrorism that you would refuse to have direct contact with anyone from the Australian office again; demanding we refer all enquiries to your lovely Russian secretary.

Personally I highly recommend the latter course of action because Australian men are completely mollified by Russian women. They become total cowards and completely subservient when they’re confronted by a well spoken, no-nonsense Russian of the opposite sex.’

There was a short silence before Claudia continued, ‘I’m really not sure why I recorded this voice-mail.’ Another tiny pause. ‘I think I want to remove any doubt you may have about my ability to speak the English language as you know it.

You mentioned in an email that you studied Australians while you were sitting in airport lounges, and you actually thought they spoke a foreign language. So I guess it’s important for me to show you I do actually speak English, not the Australian dialect, that you have difficulty translating.

I must also mention that I have it on good authority, that you actually use sub-title translations on the rare occasions that you watch Australian produced television programs.’

He remembered that she had on a later occasion also sent him audio files of her favourite poems and songs. She said the lyrics described her feelings for him. 

His heart pounded and he cried out, ‘Gone. All gone.’ Extinguished by one malicious keystroke the night Ursula arrived home and deleted all the files on his laptop, while he was trying to sort out a complex satellite problem.

The loss had been as painful as the sudden death of a loved one. He recalled how he’d been paralyzed; staring in disbelief while an intoxicated Ursula screamed abuse at him. Her voice had sounded like a flock of crazed sea birds? His brain had been scarred by the sound.

Thomas’s voice pieced the fog inside his head. ‘Hey Christoph. Are you still there? We’ve got a really bad connection. There’s a time-delay thing happening. Look why don’t you hang up and I’ll call you back. Maybe we’ll get a better line next time.’

‘Sure Thomas. I’ll be here.’

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