“Well what then?”
“Look Dan, just because you had a freaking epiphany about women.”
Dan dropped his knife on his plate. Fluke jumped. “Screw you, Ant. What does that mean?”
“Keep your hair on I’m not insulting Alex.”
Dan exhaled hard. He put his fork down without clattering it. He wasn’t taking the bait. Which was good, because even though a topic change would be a godsend, Ant hadn’t intended to ride up Dan’s arse. “Why did Bree get the job, Ant?”
“Bloody equal opportunity. She got it because she’s got tits and wears a skirt. She’d have gotten it if she had no tits and her skirt was a freaking circus tent?”
Mitch chose that moment to prove he could do two things at once. He abandoned his scan of the sports pages to say, “Is it?”
“No.” Ant twisted to look at Mitch. “She is delectably fuckable. But it has nothing to do with what she looks like, just what she doesn’t have between her legs.”
There was a scrape of metal on polished cement, the table bumped and Dan was standing. He slapped a twenty and a ten down. He had a wild look in his eyes. “You just don’t get it.” He leaned over the table till he was right up in Ant’s face. Ant could see the salt drying in the crinkles at the edges of his eyes. Dan was mad about the epiphany comment. He was way too sensitive about Alex.
“What don’t I get?”
“That she got the job because she’s better at it than you.”
“That’s not what happened.”
Dan straightened up. “I’d like to beat it into you, except I know that won’t work.” He shifted upright, put a hand on Fluke’s shoulder, bobbed his chin to Mitch and left.
What! Ant turned to Mitch and Fluke. “Did he just walk out?” Dan had never walked out of a sticky conversation before. Dan who you could say anything to, tell anything to, without having to worry he’d think badly of you, even if he did threaten you with violence.
“I think he did, mate,” said Fluke. He had a sly bloody smile on his face, like he was in on the secret to success. Fluke. Jesus.
“Shit. He’s really taking this putting women on a pedestal seriously.”
Fluke shook his head. “For a smart guy, Ant, you have shit for brains.”
“Whatever you reckon, school teacher.”
“You can’t even entertain the thought this Bree chick is better than you.”
“Nope. It’s just equal opportunity at work.”
Mitch chucked the folded paper in the middle of the table. “So I’m a humble tool belt wearer, tell me why this being equal thing between men and woman is a bad thing.”
Ant looked for their waitress. It was a three macchiato morning. “You’d be right under Belinda’s thumb wouldn’t you? I didn’t say it was a bad thing by definition, but it’s a bad thing when it’s attached to positive discrimination.”
“Meaning you think Bree got the job because your smart bosses discriminated positively in an equal kind of way. How is that a bad thing?”
Ant didn’t have the eye-contact knack Dan did. He could not score a glance from any of the wait staff. “Are there many women on building sites, Mitch?”
“I know one sparkie and a heap of landscapers, some architects, but not a single brick layer or plumber.”
“So there’s a lot of equal opportunity in your profession then?”
“Wait on, how is this about me? You could just as well ask me how many female partners there are at Bel’s law firm. Four out of fifty. Sounds pretty unequal to me. And if Bel wants to go back to uni and study to become a paralegal, or even a fully fledged lawyer, then I hope the boy’s club will give her a go. And if it takes whatever you called it,” Mitch looked at Fluke, but Fluke was reading a text, “positive equality.”
Fluke laughed, “That’ll do.”
“Then I’m all for it.”
“Let me get this straight.” Ant had eye-contact. He had a coffee order. He was not letting Mitch make him out to be a whinger. “You’re comfortable some chick got promoted over me because she’s a chick.”