I’d kept my bungalow in a constant state of renovation since buying it. I used to think it was the cause of my own marital breakdown, but now, I see it as a symptom. I truly adored and loved my husband, a dedicated cardiologist with a passion for life as long as it followed a predictable beat. I, however, needed the occasional arrhythmia, even tachycardia. Brian wanted kids and college funds. I’ve never stopped being a kid myself. Maybe that happens with the children of alcoholics, but the idea of condemning someone to a childhood of their own was an anathema to me.
Gavin thought I was nuts and warned me to grow up, pool my inheritance with Brian’s not unsubstantial income, and buy out the respectable house in Point Grey that we’d been renting. Instead, I made an offer on a needy Arts and Crafts bungalow in Kitsilano, telling no one until the deal closed. At first Brian was supportive. The bungalow was uninhabitable, but in a great location, three blocks from the beach in an up and coming neighborhood. He assumed I’d renovate and flip the bungalow for a tidy profit. To prevent friction, I let him think whatever he wanted to.
The bungalow’s needs were significant. An architect I consulted told me to have it demolished. The foundation had failed. According to her, it was economically beyond repair. A realtor offered more for the lot than I paid for the whole thing in the first place. Gavin and Brian were convinced I’d stumbled into something good, laughing over the barbeque at my dumb luck. My course was plotted. A teardown real estate deal turned the misfit computer nerd into the perfect doctor’s wife, and in prestigious Point Grey, no less.
I started waking up at 3:00 am, my face wet with tears, Brian sound asleep, his back arched toward me. If I fell asleep again, even for a second, I was convinced my heart had stopped. I had seconds of consciousness left to say goodbye, then morning would come. I guess two weeks of that was enough because one morning I took action. After kissing Brian on his way out and finishing my coffee, I called the architect. She didn’t say it, she needed the work, but she must have thought I was certifiable.
House movers lifted the bungalow off its crumbling foundation with huge jacks and left it suspended in mid air. The scene was surreal. Jackhammers and Bobcats scurried about under the floating house, breaking up and carting away the old foundation. A new foundation was formed and poured, I signed it with a hand print in the wet cement and a week or so later the house settled onto its new resting place.
I was determined to do everything I could to resurrect the bungalow and do it myself. The size of the project thrilled me and somehow I just kind of moved in. Brian stayed in Point Grey, in a house with windows and doors and stairs and heat. We saw less and less of each other. Eventually we rarely saw each other at all. We didn’t divorce, we drifted apart in a slow motion ballet that spared us both the inescapable heartache.
I’d more than doubled the bungalow’s original square footage with painstaking attention to period detail. By hammer and by hand, I was trying to build my fantasy home. A place so real I could imagine it having been lived in for generations by a family replete with experiences not too painful to recall. It was as if I could inherit the memories of a past that never existed by simulating a well-worn antique.
I was feeding plywood to a table saw and listening to Russian language tapes through headphones when Gavin crept up behind me. It just about did me in. Turning around, I came face-to-face with a bearded apparition holding groceries.
“You keep your front door unlocked so the paramedics can scrape you up when one of your tools gets you?” Gavin was only partly joking. “You don’t want unexpected company? Then maybe you should lock your doors.”
“It wouldn’t help; you have a key!”
The bags were filled with groceries from the market up the street. Not even Gavin could coax much in the way of edibles from his garden during the dark and wet Vancouver winters.
I’d built myself a dream kitchen by combining the closet sized original cooking area with the bungalow’s large dining room. The latest and greatest in modern cookware and appliances populated the new space. It was one of the few finished parts of the house and Gavin and I had gotten into the habit of preparing something and dining there on Sundays, like clockwork.
That Sunday was no different, and by the time a restaurant size wok of vegetables and tofu was sizzling on the gas range, our conversation proceeded, as it usually did, to topics meant for the office. Maybe it was the whiskey — Irish, neat, my second or third — that encouraged conversations best kept out of the minutes.
“Have any fresh ginger?” Gavin asked. Then, without skipping a beat, “I think it’s time we get clear on just what Sandy’s doing that she should not be.”
Gavin wasn’t drinking. He never did. Knowing what alcohol could do, he didn’t touch the stuff. We respected each other’s ways of dealing with our shared family legacy. He guarded what he called his consciousness, which I took to mean control, so relentlessly that he even eschewed anything containing caffeine.
“Sandy?” Gavin caught me off guard with the change in topic. “She’s doing fine. My only problem, as always, is keeping her busy.”
“Busy? I’m getting an uneasy feeling that, to keep her busy, you’ve got her social engineering.” Gavin shook the wok to stir the vegetables. “You know how dangerous that is. She isn’t you. She doesn’t exactly know about everything we do to keep the lights on. She’s a great girl, and now you have her chatting up someone from the gang that killed Jack.” He splashed soy sauce into the wok, sending up a mushroom cloud of steam. “Who, I may remind you, was working for us when it happened — well, you, really!”
“Give it a break! Besides, we’re strictly white hat now.” I used an industry classification referring to ethical hacking.
“Now? We better have always been white hat. If we haven’t, I want to know,” Gavin killed the gas and looked into the wok. “Aw, would you look at that. I’ve overcooked the bean sprouts.”
The bean spouts and bok choy were truly overcooked, but he served the stir-fry anyhow. We picked away at our meals trying to avoid conflict until I couldn’t stand it any longer and asked, “Just what do you think we’re doing that’s not white hat?”
Gavin used chopsticks to toy with the green sludge on his plate. Then, glaring at me, he started in. “First of all, it’s not what we’re doing, it’s what you are doing. Stress testing client systems by breaking into them is one thing, but goading a client’s employees into bragging about their indiscretions to find out who else is using their passwords is just wrong. It may be a surefire way to find a security loophole, but it’s also a damn effective way to get those employees fired just so you can write a report on how to tighten security.”
“It’s what the clients want. They hire us to find all their vulnerabilities. Not just the leaks, but who caused them.”
“Bull shit! It’s social engineering, it’s gray hat, and it stinks!” Gavin was livid.
“Oh, come on, it’s not gray hat. This isn’t extortion. Nobody is billed after the fact and no one’s been fired as far as I know. It’s intelligence work in its crudest form but, it is work. There’s just nothing short of biometrics to keep a lid on stupidity and a client deserves, no wait, pays us, to know where it’s leaks are.”
“Whatever, it’s just a matter of time before your intelligence gets someone fired — if it hasn’t already.” Gavin took a bite from one of the apples he’d grown from an experimental graft. “What’s really got me is that you have Sandy social engineering some stranger in Eastern Europe.” He stopped, suddenly aware of the apple. “Hmmm, I did that? Amazingly delicious.” Gavin took another bite and went on with his rant. “And all because you can’t find anything else for her to do.”