Ride a Cockhorse (16 page)

Here Mrs. Fitzgibbons decided to seize the nettle. Until now, her instincts were unerring. It was time for Mr. Zabac to vacate the field of dispute.

“Between ten o'clock this morning and noon,” she said, “I received two very attractive job offers. I turned them both down. I intend to stay here. The only way I would leave is by being compelled to leave.” Again, she regarded him with a level stare. “I can't go home today without knowing exactly where I stand. I can't function in a cloud. It's essential I have the proper authority to do the things I want to do.”

Mr. Zabac listened carefully to every word. If Mrs. Fitzgibbons's locutions sometimes involved the language of violence, it only served to dramatize her resolve.

“They will carry me out dead,” she said. “There has to be somebody downstairs to crack the whip. And I'm not talking about” — she raised her voice — “people in bow ties who go to pieces at the first sign of trouble.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons looked adamantine. “The head of your capital markets desk has a foot-wide yellow stripe down the middle of his back, and is downstairs whimpering like a baby, and doing, I'm sure, the worst thing he could possibly do. The man is liquidating everything in sight!” she cried. “You know it, and I know it. I'm not like that!” Her contempt for her adversaries suddenly shone through. “These fair-weather dandies! With their little spectacles and clipboards and fake Gucci loafers. Why, it's enough to constipate a cat. They'd take me out of here on a slab before I'd back down.” She was very close to him now, showing him the beauty of a truly determined woman. “You're going to have to fire me, Louis. You're going to have to do it today.” She put her face close to his. Her navy blue eyes flared. “You're going to have to cut my head off.”

“No one is talking about firing.”

“This place is my life. It's everything to me. It's meat and drink to me. I know what I'm doing.”

“I don't want to demote you, and I don't want to fire you. After all,” he protested, “I'm not simpleminded.”

“I need full authority to do what needs doing.”

“You're unreasonably impatient,” he exclaimed. “It's only days since we moved you into Mr. Frye's post.”

“And look what I've done. That's all the time it took me to do it. I didn't need more than a few days, any more than I needed more than five minutes this morning to bring Tom Pesso and his cameras right into your office. That's the way it should be.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons gave a name now to the position in question. “Your chief executive officer should always have her chairman's best interests in mind first, and she should be capable of doing good new things. It isn't enough just to plug away like a little drudge behind a desk and shiver in your timbers when the going gets rough.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons, at the moment, looked truly magnificent. The excitement in her blood brought a bright light to her eyes and set her whole body aglow with animation. She sensed Mr. Zabac's growing inability to stand up to her and instinctively modulated her discourse — not, however, without treating the point at issue as a resolved fact. “I'm not going to be making waves by firing people, either,” she said (a statement that might have left many a psychiatrist shaking his head). “In fact, I won't dismiss a soul.”

“A senior vice president,” the man offered with a sigh, “must be expert in all areas of finance.”

“As often as not,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons returned smoothly, “there are more important things. I don't have to understand everything there is to know about the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, or about inverted yield curves, or any other such mysteries, as long as I know who
does
know. What does the president of this country need to know about interstate highways? Or the price of a Venezuelan barrel of oil, for that matter? Leadership is different from that. Leadership downstairs!” Her bracelets tinkled as she pointed a long arm significantly toward the lower storey. “Those people need someone to be accountable to. Someone with some backbone to her.”

Just as Mr. Zabac appeared to resign himself to Mrs. Fitzgibbons's single-minded onslaught, a smile of relief came to his lips. “My goodness,” he exclaimed, charmed anew by the phenomenon standing before him.

“No one down there will defy me,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “I have the willpower.”

“If you get out of hand, even in the smallest way, I shall ask for your resignation. You understand that.”

The chairman's sudden capitulation had an instantaneous effect on her, as the severe drain on Mrs. Fitzgibbons's constitution gave way to relief. “You'll never be sorry! I promise you. If we're here a thousand years, you'll never regret it, Louis. Never,” she said. “Never.”

Mr. Zabac laughed genially. “And you're not going to fire Mr. Hooton.” He made a joke of it.

“You have my word.”

“And,” he went on, evidencing relief himself, with a light-spirited note, “all of this with the understanding that your chief tasks will be in administration” — he looked at her squarely — “and in public relations?”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons was thinking lucidly. “As long,” she insisted, “as your official memorandum naming me as chief executive officer doesn't say so.”

Mr. Zabac nodded. “It will be our understanding, yours and mine.”

“Then I agree.” Her eyes were expanded and concentrated. “And you'll never be sorry.”

“You already said that.”

“Never,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “I swear it on the head of my dead husband.”

“That's not necessary,” he returned mildly.

An observer looking in would have seen Mr. Zabac smiling like an enchanted dwarf while Mrs. Fitzgibbons stood over him vowing eternal fidelity in a frightening voice.

“I swear it on Larry's head. On all that's holy.” With that, Mrs. Fitzgibbons went quickly to the door and called in Mr. Zabac's secretary. “Bring your steno pad,” she said.

While Mr. Zabac sat forward in his tall leather armchair and dictated notice of the appointment of Mrs. Frances Fitzgibbons to the post of senior vice president and chief executive officer of the bank, Mrs. Fitzgibbons stood behind Jeannine Mielke's chair and watched with unconcealed satisfaction as the secretary's pencil scratched quickly across the lined pages. When the secretary completed the last page, Mrs. Fitzgibbons dictated the conclusion. “Effective immediately,” she said.

“Effective immediately,” agreed Mr. Zabac.

While the natty little chairman might not have noticed Mrs. Fitzgibbons's expression, the secretary, upon rising from her chair, and stealing a quick, curious upward glance at the bank's newly appointed senior officer, found herself the target of a pair of liquid blue eyes gloating with menace.

The transaction in Mr. Zabac's office affected Mrs. Fitzgibbons's breathing and nervous system for many minutes afterward. Once or twice, she stopped to take a deep breath. The stimulation and sense of triumph left her feeling very anxious, like someone who had been handed, or had just stolen, a valise full of money. Her voice was steady, though, when she spoke. “It was like taking candy from a baby,” she said to Julie. “I should have had this job years ago.
He
knew what he was doing. He knew exactly what he was doing. Somebody's going to feel it, too. Won't I settle an account or two. Won't I? They'll see if I won't.”

A quarter hour after closing, when Julie Marcotte looked in to notify her that Tom Pesso had arrived with his associates, Mrs. Fitzgibbons collected her wits instantly and came out. She met Mr. Pesso in front of her office. The perfection of her grooming and her attractively draped figure brought a quick appreciative smile to the announcer's face, as the woman standing before him was nothing less exciting in person than in the big color photo in the paper.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons turned to Julie, who stood blushing with pride, and sent her upstairs with a flick of her hand.

“Tell Mr. Zabac I want him,” she said.

From that first moment, as she turned to face the television crew, Mrs. Fitzgibbons knew she was in wonderful fettle.

And Louis trying to hide behind me the whole time!” she was saying that evening, very pleased with herself.

“And didn't you let him,” Bruce attested, with a victorious shout.

“Naturally, I did. It was me they came to see.”

Because Bruce had had the foresight to record on video cassette Mrs. Fitzgibbons's television appearance that night on the Channel 6 evening news, he had captured the most memorable seven minutes of her life on film for all time. To savor better her triumph, Mrs. Fitzgibbons came to Bruce Clayton's home that evening for dinner. When she arrived at the apartment on Brown Avenue at eight o'clock, the sedulous politeness lavished on her at the door by her beautician and by Matthew Dean, his friend and housemate, was fitting of royalty. And when Mrs. Fitzgibbons, pushing her way in, in her best cocktail dress, remarked approvingly on the crowded, comfortable, artfully decorated rooms that Bruce and Matthew shared — with mysterious glimmerings of crystal lights twinkling behind white voile draperies, the walls covered with a striking collection of sconces, hangings, medieval-looking tablets, and prettily framed watercolor paintings, not to say a luxurious amount of great soft pillows thrown everywhere — both the young men made an open show of their relief, as though their lives had depended on her approval.

“I had a horror you wouldn't like it,” Bruce said, as he raised both hands to receive Mrs. Fitzgibbons's scarf.

“It's delightful,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, who had never expressed herself with such cinematic hauteur, or had ever even cared much about furnishings or tasteful arrangements. Settings were more important to her now.

“It's priceless.”

“Do you think so?”

“Just what I hoped for and expected.”

As Bruce pivoted and handed her scarf to Matthew, Mrs. Fitzgibbons marched past him through the shadowy foyer and proceeded with an expectant look on her face through a doorway consisting of a narrow arch of velvet draperies into the almost tentlike dining room. The ceiling was hidden behind voluminous swags of dark velvet. At the center of the small, mysteriously lighted room was the dining table, with settings of china, crystal, and silverware gleaming on a field of white linen. At the head of the modest-sized table stood an impressive Savonarola chair, on the seat of which was placed a gold-tasseled pillow of regal proportions. Bruce had prepared this place of honor for Mrs. Fitzgibbons only minutes before her arrival; he hurried forward and drew back her chair. It was plain to see that Bruce wanted and was encouraging Mrs. Fitzgibbons to be spoiled and imperious.

“I should have gone to get you in the car,” he said.

While being seated, Mrs. Fitzgibbons was still showing an interest in the velvet draperies overhead, the miniature chandelier, and the orderly assemblage of the dinner service before her. The centerpiece, bracketed by chocolate-colored candles in silver sticks, was a spray of flame red gladiola.

Bruce was speaking all the while. “Matthew has a magnificent old Buick. It's ten years old, but very posh inside. You'd love it.”

“It sounds very comfortable.” She looked at the two of them. She liked making some new friends.

“It rides like a dream.”

“And it's very roomy in back,” Matthew put in.

“I could enjoy being driven sometimes,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons confessed. “I haven't been spoiled enough in my adult life. I detest driving.”

Positioned at the head of the table, with the soft light converging upon her, Mrs. Fitzgibbons glowed like a picture. As Matthew Dean set about removing the cork from a bottle of champagne, she sat back in the candlelight, looking both beautiful and executive.

As soon as she had her champagne flute in hand, Bruce played the video of her Channel 6 news interview at the bank. All three laughed lightly at various points in the broadcast, beginning with the moment when Mr. Zabac, looking ridiculously short standing beside her, and revealing visible discomfort in the glare of attention, stepped back — and she, clearly the center of attention all along anyhow, stepped forward and took over. Mr. Zabac simply vanished behind her shoulder. In truth, Mrs. Fitzgibbons was herself quite amazed at her composure before the cameras, and at the facility of her tongue.

“How wonderful!” Bruce cried.

“Interviews are a piece of cake.” Without looking, she dealt Matthew her empty champagne glass. Bruce and Matthew stood on either side of her chair. Matthew was eyeing her in raptures. Mrs. Fitzgibbons was very full of herself.

Bruce had stopped the video and backed it up, and all three laughed again as Mrs. Fitzgibbons unleashed one of her clever ripostes.

“
You're already an inspiration to many, many women,” Tom Pesso said
.

“
I'm a banker,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons, “not a woman
.”

“
That sounds quotable
.”

“
Women don't need inspiration, Tom,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons was explaining with charm. “Women are not Hottentots living in the wilds of Borneo
.”

More laughter ensued after that, with Mrs. Fitzgibbons herself appearing the most delighted of all. Her own laughter excited a second merry outburst. She looked very beautiful on the screen.

“
Is it true,” Tom went on, “that you're going to serve as grand marshal of the great Anniversary Day parade next March?
”

“
That is not true.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons showed Tom Pesso a placid but rather forbidding expression. Her earrings flashed majestically. “I was telephoned by someone on the committee, but I'm not prepared to accept. I'm a banker, not a drum major. If you want a drum major, why not ask that handsome young Adonis who leads the Ireland Parish High School Band? Young Terence Sugrue!” she piped. “He'd be a wonderful marshal!
”