Dr. Neruda's Cure for Evil (87 page)

A couple of Copley’s regional sales managers were beside him at the barbecue grill. Stick moved away from them, stepping over to me, still armed with a spatula, and said quietly, “She’s uncomfortable at parties and drinks too much.”

“She drinks too much all the time,” I said with no energy to the contradiction, as if I were talking about someone he didn’t know.

His stone face didn’t react. He said, “I’ve tried to
get
her into treatment.”

“Probably better if it comes from someone else. She’s rebelling against you and there are early symptoms of paranoia about you as well.” I leaned closer to his ear. “By the way, I pretended to be ignorant about Gene with Jack Truman. There are wild rumors circulating. Are they deliberate? Did you float the one about Gene destroying a Centaur prototype?”

Stick gave me one of his hard looks, a scrutiny I had become used to during the six meetings we’d had so far about Andy and his team. No matter how many times I showed no disapproval or judgment of his management, he continued to check my reaction, as if he couldn’t believe his good luck. I returned the stare of his dark eyes calmly and added, “It was a clever stroke.” I nodded at the pair of sales directors; they were pretending not to strain to hear our conversation. “Provides a comforting explanation. I didn’t contradict it.”

Stick nodded, eyes still brilliant and unblinking. He asked, “We have a Wednesday meeting, right?” I nodded. “I’d better turn the burgers,” he said, returning to the grill.

I stayed for another hour and a half, long enough to be confident that Mary Catharine’s drinking meant she would remember little of our conversation and to reassure Stick that nothing I had seen or heard altered my loyalty. I evaded Halley, always flirtatious and friendly when I couldn’t avoid contact, but quick to move on pointedly, paying court to the other women. She talked to the men while I gossiped with their wives. I noticed she kept her eye on me, obviously puzzled that I found these suburban women and their ratings of schools, nannies and malls, as well as their worries about aging parents, overworked husbands and fading beauty to be more fascinating than the male talk: golf, off-color jokes, how to make better use of focus groups, and which frequent flyer program is superior. What I hoped she would conclude is that I found the other women more interesting than she, in particular her mother.

When I announced my departure at four-thirty, explaining I wanted to leave early because I was worried about traffic heading into Manhattan to see the fireworks display, it was obvious I had succeeded. Halley said, “Could I get a ride with you?”

“You’re not staying?” her mother asked. “I thought you were sleeping over, honey.”

“I forgot, Mom. I’ve got to write an evaluation of Wales & Simpson’s print campaign.” She looked at me. “I came on the train. Do you mind? I’d like to avoid Grand Central on July 4th. It’s probably a nightmare.”

I frowned, but said, “Not at all.”

“Bet he doesn’t mind,” Jack Truman said and cackled. His wife made a face. I had listened sympathetically to her concern about her eight-year-old son’s reading problems. I urged her not to take the advice of the pediatrician who was pushing Ritalin to treat her boy. He had diagnosed the sort of biochemical attention deficit disorder that afflicted her son only when it came to homework, not when he read hint books on how to improve his score at video games. Before departing, in view of Halley and Jack, I kissed Amy Truman on the lips. Then I hugged Mary Catharine close, whispering, “Thank you for the tour of the house.” She goggled at me. The gin had already erased our talk. All that remained for her was an impression of my friendliness.

“Everybody likes you so much,” Halley said, once we were swaying back and forth on the Saw Mill’s curves, heading for Manhattan.

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“Oh, I don’t blame them. I mean, you made a great impression. It was sweet of you to talk to my mother and the other ladies.” Halley said “the other ladies” with a trace of sarcasm.

“Tell me something. How come there was no help?”

“Help?”

“Well, your father did the barbecuing and your mother tended bar.”

“It’s what they’re both good at.” Halley laughed to herself. “Dad likes to fry meat and Mom likes to drink.”

I said nothing.

She laughed again, this time self-consciously. “That was mean,” she said. “No, it’s a tradition. When Daddy started with Flashworks and we didn’t have much money to entertain, he’d throw a July 4th party. He could keep it informal. You know, not spend too much money and still have the businesspeople over. A cheap way to network.”

“But today was a small select group, right? Nowhere near all the business executives of the company.”

“Right,” Halley agreed. “Now he only invites his favorites. Getting an invitation is virtually like getting a promotion. That’s why the ladies were all gussied up.”

Halley was dressed for an informal afternoon: white shorts, pale pink polo shirt, and black penny loafers. Of course, she wore makeup and time had been spent to give her long shimmering black hair its elegant shape. Her bare arms and legs were tan. Her narrow feet were pale. Once in my car, she slipped them out of her shoes and raised them to the edge of the seat, hugging her knees.

“They’re so retro,” she said, meaning the wives. “I feel sorry for them.”

“Why?”

“Why? You know. Stuck out there in suburbs, raising kids.”

“They seem quite happy to me.”

“They do? Probably you’re right. Actually, the truth is, I don’t feel sorry for them. I mean, they took the easy way out. It’s not like it was for my mother—she didn’t have much choice. If they were guys, you’d call them wimps.”

“A couple of them work.” I named two women who had jobs.

“Oh, yeah?” Halley said. “Good for them. I didn’t know.”

“Actually, I thought the women were first-rate. It’s the old story. You
get
a group of men and women together and my sex always runs a distant second. I guess your father’s saved all the talent for the technical side.”

“Oh, I don’t agree. They’re first-rate guys. Jack Truman’s a great salesman. He came up with the direct mail idea that made us a major player in PCs. We’re really starting to hurt IBM now. Going direct’s allowed us to undersell them by thirty percent. It’s gonna help us on Centaur too. I think we can price Centaur at fifty percent of Toshiba’s laptops.”

“I didn’t know,” I said sheepishly. “I assumed the direct sales idea came from your father.”

“Well, he approved it. But it was Jack Truman’s idea. Dad was going crazy trying to raise capital to go the Radio Shack route, or fighting IBM in the retail stores, which is their turf. I mean, how could Jack hope to compete with a tenth of Big Blue’s sales force and one one thousandth of their budget? He saw that a lot of computer buyers were reading magazines to get tips on how the hell the machines work and he figured, hey, these people are sophisticated, they know we’re all using the same chips, we run the same software. So we started selling peripherals through the mags and it wasn’t that big a leap to selling whole machines. We’re really gonna test it with Centaur. No retail at all, except maybe for a discounter.”

“Are people going to feel comfortable spending a few thousand dollars on something they’ve never held in their own hands?”

“Well, that’s the challenge with this campaign. I think the way to go is not to reassure them.”

“Not
to reassure them?”

“Right. Make it seem snobby. You know, hip. We’ll sell them self-esteem. Like, ‘I’m not an unsophisticated jerk who needs to spend twice as much for some salesman in an overpriced retail store to hold my hand.’ I mean, realistically, at first we have to aim at second- or third-generation buyers, people who already feel savvy. Then let them promote the machine for us. I mean, if the one guy in your office who knows portables and laptops has a Centaur, then you’ll feel safe buying one. Eventually, you’re gonna feel stupid
not
calling our 800 number and ordering.”

“Very clever. Psychologically very subtle.”

“Marketing is
all
psychology.” She leaned toward me and teased, “That’s why Daddy should have you working with us, not in Geek Heaven.”

“I’ll suggest it,” I said, glancing at her. She winked at me. “So this sales approach with Centaur was Jack Truman’s?”

“No,” Halley said. She touched my arm, smiled when I glanced at her, and then pointed to herself. “It was mine. I mean, direct order in general was his. But going all direct with Centaur and going cutting edge with ads is mine.”

“Funny,” I said somberly.

“Funny?” she asked.

I didn’t seem to have heard. I nodded at the road and furrowed my brows.

She released her feet from under her and stretched, sliding them back into the penny loafers. She twisted in my direction. “You said something was funny.”

“Oh. Nothing.”

She made one of her noises of multiple feeling, at once annoyed and amused. “It is
not
nothing. What’s funny?”

“Just that—you know, sometimes it seems like there’s no need for your father.”

“No need for my father,” she repeated incredulously. “What, for God’s sakes, do you mean?”

“Well, the guys in the labs build the machines and you and Jack figure out how to sell them. Your father’s obviously a brilliant man and he picked you all, but who needs him now?” I paused. Hearing nothing from her, I mused, “Unless that’s the answer—that he’s a coach of a collection of star players.”

She didn’t say anything. I slowed for the final toll to enter Manhattan. After I paid and got back to full speed, as we scooted underneath the George Washington Bridge, Halley said, “Are you going to watch the fireworks?”

“I haven’t decided. Are they on the East Side or the West Side this year?”

“East Side.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “How about you? Oh, that’s right. You have work to do.”

“I’ll be done by nine. The fireworks are at nine-thirty.”

“Okay, I’ll pick you up at nine,” I said. She nodded. We were silent until I stopped at her apartment on Seventy-sixth, only a block from my sublet. She opened the door, one penny loafer going out, the other still inside.

“See you at nine,” I said.

She twisted back. “He’s not just a coach,” she said. “Without Daddy, nobody’d know the difference between a great idea and a lousy one. He’s the star.” She smiled cheerfully. “See you at nine.”

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN
Anima

H
ALLEY KNEW WHERE WE SHOULD GO FOR THE BEST VIEW OF THE FIREWORKS
. They closed the East River Drive from Eighteenth to Fifty-ninth Streets to allow pedestrians on it; she said the farther down we went, the better our angle. We took a cab to the Twenty-third Street entrance and walked onto the highway with streams of people: families, gangs of teenagers, gay and straight couples. We passed hawkers of flags, noise-makers, and sparklers. I stopped to buy a box of sparklers.

“You’re kidding,” Halley said, but she complied when I put one in her hand and lit it. At first she was too self-conscious to hold the sparkler high and wave. She had changed into a pale blue cotton dress, very short, showing off the full length of her slim tanned legs. The sparks flowed over her neck and chest. She winced and turned her head to the side. Putting a hand on her elbow, I lifted and moved her arm. “Be patriotic,” I said.

Halley took over. I watched, following the white of her underarm up to the brown of her forearms, her pretty face flickering in the light. She was my very own animated Statue of Liberty.

A little boy, with kinky hair and dark skin, planted himself in front of her and said,
“Abuela! Mira,”
to a fat old woman holding his hand.

I said to her,
“Le doy uno? No son peligrosos.”

I lit a sparkler for the boy. He
zigzagged
back and forth across the highway’s white lines, startling people with his bloom of sparks. His grandmother shouted at him, smiled at me, and waddled off in pursuit.

Halley’s sparkler sputtered out. “You speak Spanish?” she asked. It flared again briefly, a last gasp. She was left with a withered burnt stub.

I nodded, removed the dead sparkler, and gave her another. I didn’t light it. “Let’s get to the water.”

That was hard. People had gathered hours in advance. Halley was aggressive, however, and, in her short clingy dress, she also caused some men to make way without their intending to, especially when they realized she had me in tow. She pushed us all the way to the edge of the water.

I lit her sparkler. This time she raised it high on her own. I covered her forearm with my hand and stroked toward her shoulder. The skin was soft, the muscles firm. She watched my hand gravely. I let go. “Throw it,” I said, nodding at the water. She obeyed. The sparkler’s flight was cheered by our immediate neighbors. It arched up, a tiny firework, and nosedived into the water.

“We made our own fireworks,” I said.

Her arm was still raised. She draped it around my neck and got up on tiptoe. She aimed her mouth at mine. She kissed me quickly, a light touch of her moist lips, and hung there as if contemplating the taste, checking her appetite for more. Her black eyes peered into mine, half her face disappeared by the shadow of the crowd. There was a cheer and muffled boom. “It’s starting,” she whispered. I bent my head and pressed, pushing her full lips apart with mine. She opened wide for me, while all around us the sky blossomed with colors.

The display was going strong when we unlocked. A woman to my left smiled when I met her eyes. As I turned toward the water, a man on my right winked at me. Halley put her arm around my waist and we watched. I was glad we didn’t have to walk just then, pleasantly surprised to find my body reacting to a mere kiss with the enthusiasm of an adolescent.

We stood still until the show was over and left silently with the satisfied crowd. When we reached First Avenue I hailed a cab. As it stopped for us, I said, “Your apartment?”