Fortune Is a Woman (19 page)

“What’s with you? Did something go down in Paris or what?”

“No, Mama. Nothing went down in Paris.”

“You still sick about that man?”

“What ma–oh, that one. I don’t know. I guess so.” Her mother thought it was about a man. Fine. It’s about a man then.

“What about Sebastion? Oh, we liked Mr. Jones, Venus. Call him, won’t you? No point in making yourself sick over this other guy. Who is he anyway? He can’t be all that.”

“It’s not him so much, right now.” She hoped to switch the subject but realized too late that it would just change over to work and this was essentially the same issue.

“Work then, baby?”

“Yes, Mama, work.”

Scandal was imminent and extreme measures had had to be taken to preempt Silas Goodman from opening the can of worms that had become Soloman-Schmitt these days. In fact, her career might have been on the line hadn’t Paula proved to be so adept at scandal control.

Now losing her job. She wasn’t sure how she truly felt about that aspect of the situation. “It’s just work, Mama.” But she sure didn’t want her name dragged through the mud by the tabloids. She could guess how that would feel, how her family would react to it all.

“That why you come back so early?”

Yeah, actually, but she really didn’t want to go into it. “We got it all resolved, Mama. It’s fixed now.”

Paula had hatched a bold counterattack and had just unveiled it in her office yesterday, the first day in the full week that Venus had been back that Lydia could seemingly tolerate being in her presence. The joint president sat in the chair right next to hers, a pillar of salt for the entire hour it took Paula to present the defense strategy. Venus had wanted to interrupt the session, to scream
I’m sorry
, but she was ambivalent about the matter by now and, in truth, not convinced anymore that she had done something she was supposed to feel sorry for.

“Everybody’s got secrets,” Paula had asserted, dramatically emptying the contents of a big, fat folder onto her desk. “And so does Goodman, that son-of-a-bitch!”

And so he had, much to the relief of the three women in a room, conspiring to pull him off his high horse. Photos, tapes, restaurant tabs, jewelry receipts, income tax evasion. These are the kind of things that indiscreet people with soapboxes and agendas never think about when they’re scrutinizing someone else for their indiscretions, when they’re just too distracted with very private plans for a very public hanging.

The ladies had Goodman real good, thanks to busy Paula Treadwell. The soon to be ex-member of the board of directors of Soloman-Schmitt would never know what hit him.

Lydia felt bad already. “But what will he do?”

Paula scoffed. “He’ll resign ‘to spend more time with his family.’ Get it?”

Oh, yeah. Now she did.

_____

Six in the morning. There was virtually no one at the club and JP Beaumont was alone in the Olympic size pool, executing her thirteenth lap in the far lane when Venus came in. Absorbed in her favorite exercise, Lydia wasn’t aware that someone had intruded on her solitude.

Absorbed in her own concerns, Venus wasn’t aware that the swimmer was JP Beaumont. All she observed was that the woman slicing through the water did so with great skill and strength. She took the lane on the opposite side of the pool and picked up her pace.

_____

“Jesus and Mary,” Chairman Ackerly said under his breath. “Nice work, Treadwell.” He chaired the board but everyone knew the real power behind it ultimately rested with Goodman, a behind-the-scenes kind of man, infamously strident and self-righteous, the type that people were loathe to have to confront, the profoundly difficult type who proved profoundly impossible to overthrow and way too handy at disposing with anyone who dared to try, as Joseph Ackerly had witnessed time and time again. The dossier in front of him was a dream come true and he couldn’t help feeling warmly toward the woman who had delivered it to him, even though Paula Treadwell did not generally kindle those kind of emotions in people.

“Not my work, Joe. Compliments have to go to JP Beaumont, I’m afraid. I tried to warn the man.”

“Truly amazing,” he murmured, practically fondling the contents. “I didn’t think Lydia had it in her, to tell you the truth.”

“Good. And lucky for our side, neither did Silas.”

He flipped through the evidence again.
Boy-oh-boy, wouldn’t that vicious old fart appreciate this
, he said to himself. It was head chopping Goodman style and he knew that it would, without a struggle, render the man instant history. He couldn’t wait for the board to convene next week. He intended to bring it to their attention today.

“You thank her for me, Paula. I’ve been wishing for something like this for years.”

_____

Lap nineteen. She was cognizant of someone else in the water. They both reached the same edge at the same time. Dive, tuck, roll, and kick off again. They were synchronized.

_____

Paula got an early start this morning, in her office by six-thirty. No assistants there and no Beaumont either. She liked it that way for the first fifteen minutes, but then it was too much peace and quiet for her to stand and when she discovered that she hadn’t a clue where the hot coffee was stashed or how to produce a donut she became restless and found herself roaming the corridors in search of a warm body or a vending machine. By the time she returned with one stale pastry and a tepid glass of water, there was a message already from Chairman Ackerly.

He had promised to give her a blow by blow of the board’s reaction yesterday. She would have to content herself till then with this abbreviated version. “Broke out the booze for this one,” it said. She was thrilled to hear it. “We faxed him notice of our findings.”

Message from Silas, too, though the rat wouldn’t leave his name. She recognized his gnarly voice anyway. “I will never resign,” he said, completely lacking in humility or the requisite conciliatory tone one ought to have under the present circumstances.

Paula was not faint of heart so she laughed out loud at his challenge. It was, she knew from experience, pure bravado. They always talk like that before they see the proof.

_____

Lap twenty-one for Lydia. The other swimmer was keeping up with her. That was only because she had been at it longer and she was getting tired.

_____

Without seeing the case against him, Silas Goodman had no idea how badly he was bleeding. In that state of ignorance, he failed to see the futility of defending his “good name” and it was only minutes after leaving his message with Paula Treadwell that he had the audacity to leave yet another one with the chairman demanding that he be allowed to address the board within the next seventy-two hours, the time, he predicted, that he would need to mount a successful counter-defensive.

Paula had gone to great lengths to leave all the parties concerned with the impression that Goodman’s fatal blow had come from JP Beaumont herself, and Silas, having no choice but to believe in it, was reeling from that perception, to the degree that he was no longer himself and that it clouded his judgment. In short, he was not up to the course he had embarked upon and he was not functioning as well as he thought. In this condition he seemed to forget entirely that a corporation does not operate like a democracy with all of its civil protections, a due process clause. He forgot that there are no such things as rights there, only privileges, and that in terms of class, one was either at the top or at the bottom. If one found oneself in the middle somehow and it could not be credited to nepotism or cronyism, then it was only temporary, the time spent there determined simply by how long it would take to rise or to fall. It had also slipped his mind that the only real concern of a corporation and its directors is the “happiness” of its shareholders.

_____

Lap twenty-seven. It seemed the other swimmer might actually overtake her. Lydia sucked in her air deeply before going under this time. She had not expected such a work-out this morning. Tuck and roll–she kicked off farther than before, striving to gain another length over her competitor.

_____

Whether happiness is derived from real profits or from imagined ones is not a relevant distinction in modernized economics. What matters most to a corporation is the shareholders’ perception of profitability. After all, markets are driven primarily on two principles: investors are confident therefore they buy; investors are not confident therefore they sell. Anything else is just gambling.

Irrefutably then, bliss is the actual commodity on exchange in the marketplace and the board of directors technically represents the corporation’s shareholders in their ambitious pursuit of it, acting utterly infatuated with the corporate officers in happy times and, in unhappy times, protesting too much and wanting the rascals out. It’s the same in politics. Consult Treadwell or Machiavelli.

Soloman-Schmitt was in happy times again, after weathering some frightening storms. It had Treadwell to thank for that and the board was necessarily in bed with her, head over heels in love with her protégé, Lydia Beaumont. Goodman’s crusade against her, prompted by what, who really knew, had proven to be a liability for him and they were glad to be able to end it all like this. Merely a formality, they granted him his seventy-two hours, at which time they hoped to see him capitulate and resign.

But Silas Goodman did not understand this. He could not see that, like the snake run over in the road and mortally wounded, he was coiling and striking at the air, his fangs broken and drained of their venom, his once elastic spine crushed beyond repair.

_____

It is, they claim, the best form of exercise. Swimming exercises every muscle in the body.

That was probably true, Venus speculated, since every muscle in her body was beginning to ache. If she had known that such a workout awaited her this morning she would have warmed up before getting in the water. She didn’t know how many laps the competition was ahead of her, but it did seem that the woman was indefatigable.

_____

“Treadwell here…go ahead, Joe, you’re up early…he what…no kidding?…god bless him then….nah, it’s only seventy-two hours…well of course…I would…sure, give the file to him right now then…mmhmm…no, he can’t…how could he, Joe?…Joe…how can he defeat it?”

_____

She had lost like this before, so it was in the act of losing that it finally dawned on Venus that her pool buddy was Lydia Beaumont. Nobody else could swim like that. She halted in the middle of her last stroke, took a few large gasps of air into her lungs and submerged.

_____

“Yeah right, and then he goes home to his wife and family with a bunch of reporters in tow asking him these questions? I don’t think so…
won’t
, I tell you… because he’s not a stupid man, he’s just a chauvinistic man, that’s all, and he’s made a huge mistake he’ll never recover from…I guarantee it, Joe…okay, I’ll say he drags it out and does it in front of the board.”

_____

Lap thirty-five and Lydia was finally giving in to exhaustion when she suddenly noticed that the other swimmer had dropped from view. She paddled to the ladder and stood on the first rung and inspected the deck. Bone dry. There were no footprints anywhere. Two towels draped over two chairs. Whoever it was hadn’t left the pool. She clung to the ladder breathlessly and, out of curiosity, waited in the water for the defeated swimmer to emerge.

_____

“Yes, do it…go on and give it to him and I’ll bet you five hundred dollars he tenders his resignation…oh?…okay, I’ll make it a thousand dollars…ummmmm, he’ll do it by the eleventh hour…the eleventh hour–it’s a figure of speech, Joe, you know like blow me?…oh, for Pete’s sake, Joe, I’ve got to give the exact time he surrenders?”

_____

There had just been another swimmer in this pool. They had not left the pool so they had to still be in the pool. Lydia let go of the ladder and sank to the bottom to investigate.

_____

“Joe, forget it, I’m not betting on whether the poor man cries or not…no, I won’t do it…hah…because it’s grisly and I’m not going to, besides what do you think I am, callous or something?…fine, a separate bet then…ummmmm, five hundred dollars says that he doesn’t cry, but his bottom lip trembles.”

_____

Hi, Venus waved from her watery empire. There was no response from her astonished mermaid. I’M SORRY, Venus mouthed, seizing the opportunity and watching it expire in an explosion of bubbles.

Lydia frowned and climbed back up the ladder.

Caution

“I'm curious, Angelo, what exactly is your sexuality?”

She wondered why it had taken Paula so long to inquire about it. “I really don’t think you can ask me that.”

“Let’s just pretend I can.”

“That’s what you came to see me about?”

“Yes.”

Venus sighed and set her work aside for the moment. She was extremely wary of Paula. She liked her, she disliked her. She trusted her, she distrusted her. “What do you really want to know?”

“Your sexual preference.”

“My sexual preference. Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“I prefer it lying down.”

Blame and Praise

He entered the elevator dragging his sword and shield behind him, relieved to find no one else in there. He was going home for a much-needed rest and, in a moment of clarity, had declined to take the incriminating dossier with him, advising the board that he didn’t quite need a thorough review of it to see that it was quite thorough.

But hell hath no fury like a man scorned; he made a mental note as he descended never to underestimate a woman again, perfectly aware that his epiphany had hit him too late to be of service in the present war.