Beauty: A Novel (9 page)

What Now?

C
arol took her time making her way through the crowd. She was shy, now, around them. She was so used to delivering bad news.

“You. Ichabod.”

A guy in a new chambray shirt shouted it, at her obviously. He had to be Mathews’s agent at the meeting. He’d worn the shirt to look one-with-the-people when he talked about the new hotel or whatever was to be the development, though he’d never even stood up when Anna Rose Taormina asked. Carol guessed he was going to take a swing at her to justify his evening.

She had been called Ichabod more than once, and by the time she figured out what it meant, it hadn’t bothered her. But now she was on her own and was open to scrutiny on her own account. What was more, this was not just about her. She had declared a responsibility to Elizabeth Island and the people who surrounded her. She needed to stand into that right now and face whatever Chambray was going to say. She got up on the seat of a chair next to Anna Rose Taormina, so Chambray and everybody else could get a good look at her. The meeting was done, but people who were leaving stopped.

“What now, Ichabod?” Chambray said.

“Now we go to work,” she said and hoped that would be it and knew it wouldn’t. He’d been beaten, and he didn’t like being beaten. He knew how smart she wasn’t, that Baxter Blume wouldn’t send a heavyweight out to bury a company the size of Elizabeth’s Fish. He thought he knew she was all bluff, which could turn out to be the case, but the rest of the room should not think it. She believed in herself and believed in the old plant. Starting right this minute, she believed that she lived here.

He said, “You’re going to work that plant? What the hell do you know about fish? How about giving us all a glimpse of what makes you think you can turn a profit from an antique operation that industry experts couldn’t make a go of? You just killed these people’s chance to turn their harbor into a revenue source again, and I want to know, just out of curiosity, what a small-time corporate undertaker can do to replace that revenue. Is Baxter Blume going to help you out? Do they have the faintest idea what you’re up to?”

That was it, wasn’t it? Carol thought. She had not just said she was going to do something, upon which people would depend. She had offered the hope of a lot of hard work. She knew what the work was, essentially, but she’d never specifically done it. She was scared shitless that she would not be able to do it well enough.

Baxter wandered through the inside of her head with his hands in his pockets. He said, “Okay, you’re here, and you’re naked. Ignore it. First thing you learn in boarding school. So what if you had an episode and ended up without any clothes on? Say, My clothes are on. Say, I have great clothes and you don’t have any idea what I’m doing and it’s none of your business. Say, I’ve caught you red-handed and I’m going to call the FBI and get to the bottom of this.”

Carol smiled at Chambray, beamed at him, but Chambray had lost a deal, and he wasn’t going to back off for a smile. He said, “You got your zoning. You killed off a lot of potential business in this town, business this town needs. Now what, Ichabod?”

Carol said, “I’m going to work, and I’m bringing as many people with me as I can, real work that’s a real part of this town. What’s your business plan, pal? Your people, whoever they are, as if we didn’t know, wanted to buy the site of the old fish plant at a harbor zoning price and then sell to Marriott or a condo developer at Marblehead prices. So who was supposed to get that bonanza? Your fat-boy employers, who’ve already ripped the town off and driven Elizabeth’s Fish into the sea? And the continuing revenue goes to a corporate holding company a thousand miles away, while the folks in this room get to be the waiters and the maids. Have I got that right?”

Chambray was already headed out with his briefcase and his thousand-dollar raincoat, and Carol shouted after him, “Have I got that right?”

Baxter would have drawn blood, but Carol had managed it cleanly. She was surprised to realize it had been fun.

Soon everyone was
gone but Dave Parks, Annette Novato, Anna Rose Taormina, Buddy Taormina, and Easy Parsons. Parks said, “What now, Carol?”

It wasn’t Chambray’s tone of voice, but the words reverberated in the empty room, and Carol had to answer them for her team.

She started for the doors, saying, “Let’s go down to the old plant and orient.”

Easy was beside her when they got to the stairs. She wondered if that was on purpose. The stairs were wide, so he wasn’t pushed against her, and she didn’t look at him, but she felt him there. Now that the meeting was done, she wanted to get into bed by herself next to her graveyard. She wanted to be alone under the covers and let herself be as afraid as she was of Chambray’s questions. Yet here Easy was, with all the feelings of the parking lot, and she was afraid of that, too.

She went fast down the stairs, running away to get her plant in gear, her own plant. She wasn’t too tired for that. But so did Easy go fast, right beside her. And with that, that quickly, she could have been a girl, the two of them skipping down stairs hard as they could but not away from anything. For fun. She could have laughed.

Outside, she walked fast along the night-lit street that ran in front of Town Hall, and she knew Easy would stay with her. She watched him in glances. His arms were long and they swung, and his body lunged with every step. He angled forward. He covered ground. She walked faster. So did he, and they pulled away from the others like they wanted to be by themselves, the kind of thing girls in the parking lot did, and she’d done with Dominic, that long ago and not since.

As they passed the YMCA, Easy said, “That asshole with his Ichabod thing. I got to tell you, I almost broke him down.”

Carol looked at him when he said that, but he didn’t look back. He meant it, and he would know how to punch somebody out. She didn’t believe that kind of stuff was important to him, any more than it was to her, and just the same, he was telling her everything. He’d brought them to his truck, and he opened her door and shoved rain gear and mail and two cell phones mostly out of the way, and she climbed in. She smelled sweat and grease, and she fit her feet around the extra pair of boots he had on her side of the floor. She tried to remember the last time she had been this nervous in a car with a man.

Forty-plus years ago, Dominic took Carol out in her bent Mustang before her dad got it straightened. She was thirteen. They went to the dirt behind the old fabricator buildings. Dominic put the seat all the way back and had her sit between his legs. She took it high into second and sat back against him, and he didn’t touch the wheel, but he wrapped around her with his hands there in case. Nobody else, just them and her fishhook of a Mustang. When she had her speed, he shouted, “Now!” She hit the brake so hard she drove herself back into him, and she ripped the wheel and held it. She didn’t care if she died. She stood on the brake and ripped the wheel and was going to hold on, like he’d said, the full nine yards to hell. They lifted and stayed up on two wheels, and he laughed the weird squeal he did when regular laughing wasn’t enough. They settled and slid, and he shouted, “Step on it!” She stood on the gas and they spun. That Mustang she’d tricked, it spun like a top, Dominic squealing and her not making a sound. She stayed planted on the gas and kept the wheel locked over and they spun, and she could feel his heart hammering against her bony back through their T-shirts and his smell of grease and sweat.

Only this was a three-quarter-ton flatbed, a truck she could like but different from the Mustang. And this was Easy beside her, and he didn’t say anything, and neither did she. It was only a minute down to the harbor and the plant. By the time Easy got out his side and she got out hers, everybody else had arrived, and Carol had to come up with a plan.

They gathered in the dark next to the fence, and she said, “Please take a moment here to let things sink in. And excuse me. I’m going to take my moment on the dock. Right back.”

She opened the fence instead of sliding under and walked out through the tunnel beneath the offices that closed the overhead gap between buildings.

She got to the dock and looked down the water side of the plant for the extruded rails of sliding doors. She said aloud to herself, “What now?” She said, “Come on.” She didn’t know what now, but she knew that it was there to be had. She waited as if the knee-jerk instinct Baxter valued might swim up out of the slack black water beneath her.

Instead, she heard someone walking out the tunnel.

It was Easy.

She pointed across at the darkened silhouette of his boat and said, “A hundred feet?” as if she knew about boats.

“Ninety-two,” he said, and he was it, of course. Easy was it.

She said, “You’re my business plan. I almost forgot.”

He said, “You did great tonight.”

She grabbed his shoulders and pulled herself against him and kissed him. His shoulders were strong, and he kissed her back, and his lips were softer than she would have thought. She’d meant, if she’d meant anything, to kiss him and run away. She kissed him longer. They stopped and he smiled. He was the one who tilted his head to the side for everyone else waiting on the other side of the plant. She was supposed to be the businessman. She kissed him once more and laughed before she ran.

Teesop

A
s long as nobody was taking advantage, Dave Parks had always liked to see an office romance, but this was the first time he’d seen one without there being an office yet.

Carol came hurrying out from the tunnel and through the gate in the fence, and as she came, she yelled a little too loud, “It’s the fresh fish.” That was a good thing to yell at the moment, but Dave wasn’t so far removed from Blueberry Hill that he couldn’t tell when there’d been kissing.

Give her credit, though; she didn’t look back when Easy Parsons followed her out at a discreet distance.

Everybody stood in a huddle there at the fence, and Carol stepped into the huddle like a quarterback. She said, “Also, we move our offices downstairs and lease out the office space upstairs. But it’s the fresh fish that’s going to give us our margins.”

Anna Rose said, “Of course it is the fresh fish.”

Dave was not going to smile away any secrets, but it looked like Carol was having difficulty not smiling. She had her lips pressed together, but the corners of her mouth were tipping up just the same.

Easy said, “It’s not just that Carol’s doing fresh.”

Was Carol blushing? Who could tell in the dark?

Easy said, “It’ll be nice to bring in fresh on any scale around here for the first time in ten years. But the thing is, Carol’s going to get her fish at a better price. All the other producers buy through one of the auctions now, and that means they have to pay the auction fee and then pay to bring the fish to where they’re going to cut it. Carol doesn’t have to do any of that, because me and Buddy’ll sell and deliver to her door. More than that, she’ll get full discount of whatever our costs would be in time and fuel if we had to drive our boats down to the nearest auction and back. Carol’s going to get a volume of fish cheaper than anybody between Connecticut and Maine. She just has to cut it and sell it.”

Well said, Dave thought, and good to have Easy say it. He was a smart guy, and everybody on the harbor respected him, despite the fact he could be more reserved than the Old Man of the Mountain. Carol was not your socializing sort either, at first glance, though she did have the smile she was concealing.

Buddy said, “There are still cutters in town. That’s no problem.”

Carol said, “Anna Rose, I’m thinking you and the Elizabeth Island Wives of the Sea are how we sell our fresh fish.”

Anna Rose Taormina looked like she’d been waiting years for the proposition, and she probably had, and Dave was embarrassed nobody in the old company had ever thought of it. They wouldn’t have had product for her, but even so.

She said, “We call it The Elizabeth Island Wives of the Sea Bring You the Freshest Fish You Ever Tasted in Your Life.”

It was perfect Anna Rose, and not a bad name, and Dave laughed.

“Don’t laugh,” Anna Rose said. “It is a good name, and we know places and we know people. People and places know who we are. All the way in Worcester, they know. In Springfield, they know. These fishermen only hope in their dreams they can bring more fish than I and my women will sell.”

“No,” Dave said, making himself serious for Anna Rose. “No, it’s a good name, and you’re right about it working.”

He said to Carol, “Part of me still thought we were kidding, but if we buy our frozen block fish at market and make and sell our fish sticks at cost, we can be competitive. The fresh fish sideline, if we’re buying under market from Easy and Buddy, there’s our profit margin.”

Carol said, “Thanks, Dave,” and looked him in the eye and nodded, making a connection beyond just polite. She wanted his confirmation for herself and for the rest of them, and he was glad to give it and glad of the appreciation.

Carol said to the others, “Does everybody get that? Assuming the lines here still run for our basic fish stick, the fresh fish that Easy and Buddy and other boats bring in will give us the profit margins that will give us a chance. Leasing the offices will give us another boost.”

Dave watched her willing herself to believe what she said. And why not? Though he wondered whether Baxter and Blume would believe it.

Now Carol turned to Annette. “What else would help us on costs, Annette? What are you seeing over there in the new offices that we don’t want around our necks here?”

Annette said, “Aside from that electricity I told you about, the new plant is paying on debt. If we don’t have anything to spare, we don’t want to carry debt on our plant.”

Carol looked at Dave. She wanted him to break the news. “What does that mean, Dave, about the debt?”

This was the big play for her, Dave thought. Nobody wanted to use their own money in business, but if you were going to the edge, you went with your own money. She looked like she had a sense of humor about it, but there wasn’t anything funny about it for Dave. Sure, if you used your own money, every dollar coming in the door was yours. But if nothing came in, how funny was that? She was tougher than Dave, no question about it.

He said to everybody, “It means we buy our plant for cash money,” and he hoped all of them would run for their cars as he ran for his. Because no way were the contributions of most of the employees of the plant going to fund a stock ownership plan for this plant. He said it anyway, asked Carol, “ESOP?”

Carol said, “ESOP?” and smiled around at all of them. Dave wondered if there was a more special smile for Easy Parsons.

Dave said, “I’m almost to retirement. Can’t we please borrow?” Which, okay, he followed with a laugh, and a gesture to their beat-up old plant. What did you do, if you weren’t going to run? You laughed. His two girls, back in Pittsburgh, were out of school and married to guys making more than him, and his wife, here, Barbara, had all the courage she’d ever need. Dave was the worrier, and he didn’t want Barbara to have to tighten her belt for him at this late stage of the game.

Everybody looked at the plant with Dave. It was a wet night. They would have to decorate some if they wanted to lease the offices.

Carol said, “Dave, if anybody would loan on it, what kind of rate would they give us?”

His turn again. “We maintained the lines,” he said. “They’re ugly but they run. We can find somebody who’d lend. But no, we’re not going to get any sweetheart rates until we prove what the business will do. And until then, we can’t afford to give away any dollars that come in the door. Shit.”

It was raining again, and the fence gleamed and so did the walls of the plant and the corrugations of the lobster company going back toward town. The rain silvered down through the security lights. Dave thought for no good reason except hope that Carol might now decide she wanted to kiss Easy again, and everybody else could go home.

Instead, she kicked him, Dave. She said, exactly like he knew she was going to do, “Even an ESOP is not enough, Dave.”

“What?” he said. “My life savings aren’t enough? You want my kids?” He shoved his chin out, opened his hands in disbelief, and got a laugh from everybody.

Anna Rose said to him, “It was from my girls I had to put up with that kind of attitude, David. They wanted drama. The boys just sneaked. With the boys, I never knew until the hospital called, or the police.”

Carol said, no break in focus, “We’ll get a fire-sale price from Baxter Blume, and even so, we’ll need more money than what we can get from ourselves and our employees.”

Annette would have heard of it, but Dave said to Easy and Anna Rose and Buddy, “Employee stock ownership plan. That’s what we’re talking about with the ESOP.”

Easy said, “No, Dave. Teesop.”

Dave said, “
E
, actually. ESOP.”

“Teesop. I’m talking a
t
.”

Dave pointed a finger at Easy and said, “
T
for town stock ownership plan. I knew that. Teesops.”

Buddy said, “Sell stock in this plant to regular people in town?”

Anna Rose said, “Why not? I live in town, and if I had been running this company, it wouldn’t look like this and nobody would have made that Disney’s World in the woods. Families still have money in this town. Fishing families. Harbor families.”

Carol said, “Do you think people will want to do it?”

Dave’s question was, How did Carol learn to drive this bus this well after one day in town, after a lifetime of killing things?

“Don’t you worry about wanting,” Anna Rose said. “Everybody, and a lot of them wasn’t at the meeting, have been waiting for tonight. Maybe they’re already at my house with money. If they aren’t I will take you to their kitchens and you will tell them.”

Buddy Taormina said, “Ma. We want to be sure we sell something that works. Take your time, Ma.”

Dave settled in to watch this play out. He also resolved it was time for a new raincoat.

Easy said, “It ain’t us selling, Buddy. It’s us buying. It’s Beauty selling to us and to everybody else.”

So he did call her Beauty. Dave hadn’t believed it.

Anna Rose said, “Ezekiel Parsons, you sound like cold feet.”

Easy stared at his feet and said, “Thank you.”

Carol smiled at Easy when he looked up. Dave saw Easy smile, too. Easy was ready to invest, regardless of the cold feet. Dave watched as Carol kept looking at Easy, and she didn’t let the smile go away, and Easy didn’t let his go away either.

For Buddy, Carol got serious.

She said, “Buddy’s got a point. We want to go inside at daylight with somebody who can persuade us that at least the mechanics work. That may not be all Buddy wants to know, but it’s a start. Who was running things here while the head of production was eating off the new plant?”

“He was there tonight,” Dave said. “Ben Garcia. He’s a kid, but he can run this place with his eyes closed. And he maintained it.”

“We need him down here first thing in the morning. I need to see it go, and Buddy needs to see it go. And if we can, we also need to dig out some numbers on this plant alone. Annette, can we show people that it was breaking even when it was still running?”

Carol was asking in public for a projection that would have consequences for her neighbors. Annette was frozen, and Carol said, “Anything you can pull, Annette, the best glimpse you can manage. What about the cursory numbers you ran for the fat boys when they were pretending they wanted to sell it?”

“Oh, that’s right.” Annette unfroze. “With anything recent, every figure refers to another figure and another figure in a circle, on purpose. Still, yes, like we said.”

Everybody looked at Annette as if they thought she was going to fall down, but Annette, if you gave her a minute, was always fine. She looked around at everybody and, perfectly solid, said, “Okay, Ms. MacLean. Carol.”

Buddy said, “Those assholes. Excuse me, Mr. Parks.”

Dave raised his hands to Buddy, no foul, and guessed that it must be sweet for Carol to come into a town and not be the rat.

She said, “We’ll use what you find, Annette, and hope it gives us a fair grip on our chances. While we’re at that, we’ll also get ready to sell shares. I’ll find someone to set up the plan. Then, Anna Rose, you and I will go to the kitchens.”

Carol is driving the bus, Dave thought, and picking up speed.

To Buddy, Carol said, “We don’t sell a share to anyone until we believe people can get a fair understanding of our chances. There will be risk, no matter what, and we’ll say so. But we’ll know the equipment runs, and we’ll have a good argument for running it. Even in the best scenario, it’s going to be a risk, and not an ordinary risk, so before I ask anybody else, I’ll put in more of my own money than I can afford to lose. I’ll put myself as much as or more at risk than anyone else who comes in.”

Everyone waited for her to go on, but that was it for now, thank God.

Dave knew he was going to have to kick in. Maybe it would feel like fun in the morning.

Carol said, “Let’s all go home. Dave, unless we hear differently, we’ll meet your engineer here at eight thirty.”

It was too late and too wet for a postmortem, but as people went for their cars, Dave got Carol’s eye and gave her a thumbs-up. One day at a time, and today was the first of a whole hell of a lot of days, God willing, and just the same, it had been a hell of a day. Carol had definitely scored. If Dave was going to make a fool of himself with his money, which he was, at least he’d be doing it for an honest, good cause, which was one feel-good way to lose your money, and he’d be working with a woman who had juice and smarts. All in all, Dave felt good.

Then there was Easy, standing by the passenger door of his truck, waiting for Carol. Carol was standing still with her fists up under her chin, looking like a child on the first day in a new school, the first minute on the playground. Now Dave, if he were going to be scared, which was what Carol looked (if you could believe that), he’d be scared about everything that had happened today and was going to happen as a result—the business part. In fact, he was scared. What he would never be scared about was going to sit next to someone he wanted to kiss, especially if that someone wanted to kiss him. A theoretical question, not involving wives. Admittedly, kissing Easy Parsons would, for Dave, be a drag.

He watched Carol watching Easy wait by his truck, Easy watching back. Inside his head and damn near out loud, Dave said, “Oh, come on, Carol. Go. Please. He’s a good person and so are you, and these things don’t happen so much after you turn fourteen.”

She shook her head at Easy. It looked like a nice shake from where Dave stood, but there it was, a shake, a no, and Easy probably understood that Carol wasn’t a waffler.

She turned and said to Dave, “I’m going to walk.”