Fortune Is a Woman (20 page)

He would, he promised himself, perhaps in vain, live to fight another day.

In the meantime, fate, ever twisting as it is perversely wont to do at times, offered him yet one last chance to stand face to face with his victorious opponent, because JP Beaumont had just stepped into the elevator, too preoccupied as usual to immediately notice Silas Goodman slumped there in the corner, his sword hanging ludicrously at his side with its blade broken off at the tip, his once trustworthy shield so heavily tarnished and so cumbersome to him this afternoon that he couldn’t bear it anymore.

It was a monstrously golden opportunity for Silas to bury the hatchet and concede defeat in a sportsmanlike manner, but he was, of course, free to use this fleeting moment in any way he saw fit.

The elevator stopped at the next floor and two executives entered.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Beaumont.”

“Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon, Ms. Beaumont…Mr. Goodman.”

“Good af…ternoon. Good afternoon, Mr. Goodman.”

“Oh, bravo, Ms. Beaumont. Good afternoon indeed,” he snarled. He had always found her aloof demeanor condescending. It was the least of her sins today. “Bravo, Ms. Beaumont. Congratulations are in order for you, aren’t they?”

Ding!

Three more executives on the next floor. The two before them repositioned themselves against the wall and stared at their feet as their coworkers boarded.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Beaumont.”

“Good afternoon,” she answered.

“Good afternoon Ms.–”

“Good afternoon,” she interrupted. “And good afternoon,” she said, quickly dispensing with the necessity for a greeting from the third.

The three new passengers glanced around the elevator, puzzled by the thick air. “Hey, Smitty, how are you?” one of them asked, trying to lighten things up a bit.

“Good,” Smitty muttered self-consciously. He made a series of rapid eye signals toward the corner where Goodman stood glowering and banged on the close button a few times.

“Ah, Mr. Goodman,” the hapless speaker continued. “Good afternoon, sir” he offered, smiling ignorantly until one of his comrades jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.

“Afternoon,” Goodman managed.

The elevator descended several more floors in a toxic silence that only Goodman would dare to disturb.

“I guess I underestimated you, Beaumont. Believe you me, it won’t happen again.”

She was required to respond to that. Everyone in there expected her to. “Mr. Goodman,” she began, happy that her voice hadn’t failed. “I am truly sorry to hear of your troubles. I wish you nothing but the best. Believe
you
me.”

“Do you? Well isn’t that nice to hear? Isn’t she nice, your joint president? A real doll.”

No one acknowledged his statement.

“You know, I knew your father,” he said with distaste.

“Really?” she answered unflinchingly. “Funny that he’s never mentioned you.”

Someone had the audacity to snicker.

“Knew of him,” Goodman hastily qualified. “
Of
him.”

The elevator stopped again, but the would-be passengers, seeing Goodman and the joint president together in such tight quarters and having just heard about their contest, thought better of joining them and decided to wait for the next one instead. No one blamed them for the slight.

“I fail to make the connection. You’re blaming my father for your–?”

Another floor and
ding
! The doors flew open.

“I hope you can explain that to me. It’s a rather odd idea.”

Two more executives wished to board. They had caught the tail end of JP Beaumont’s last sentence and, recognizing that it was none other than Silas Goodman she had cornered, exchanged quizzical looks with each other. “Why not?” one of them finally mumbled, stopping the doors just before they closed again. The others inside made room for them.

“Wally,” someone inexpertly whispered, “don’t we get out here?”

Wally nudged his colleague to shut up and the doors closed.

Goodman was in no shape for jousting and he could feel that now. His face quivered with agitation, aware that everyone was waiting on his response.

“I’ll have you know, young lady–”

“And I’ll have you know, Goodman, that I will not tolerate that crap from anyone. I hope I am making myself clear, because I know you’ve been confused about such things in the past and I regret to inform you that it is that type of confusion that has ultimately cost you so dearly today, though it is plain you to see you are unwilling to accept this reality.”

The doors were wide open again but no one had seen that happen.

“Full to capacity!” Wally gleefully announced to three gaping faces in the hallway, three people displaying an inordinate amount of enthusiasm for riding the elevator this afternoon.

“Aw, c’mon!” they clamored.

“Sorry!”
Ding!
“Full to capacity!”

“Reality!” Goodman was foaming at the mouth. “I’ll tell you reality,
Ms
. Beaumont. The reality is that you and your kind have disturbed the natural order of our world and that it is my duty and the duty of those like me to restore that order again. To those ends I will nev–”

“Mr. Goodman, you do have my sympathy. It must be devastating to wake up and find yourself and your kind so…so obsolete. And I am sorry to hear that you’re not comfortable in the world. It is after all the only one we have, imperfect as it may seem. Perhaps now that you’ve got so much free time on your hands you can explore the possibility that it always was.”

A murmur of consent cut off his final retort.

Minutes later, the doors opened to the main lobby and Lydia was greeted by a small crowd that had assembled there, waiting, not for the elevator she realized, but in anticipation. It was blood sport they were eager for and she hated being a part of it. She smiled as benignly as possible as her elevator mates fell all over themselves in an effort to permit her to exit before them. They filed out after her then, conspicuously playing follow-the-leader while Silas Goodman festered, abandoned in his unhappy corner.

Let Us Now Praise Famous Women

“I believe we are, as a civilized people, ready to embrace the truth, because it is flirting with us and courts our attention. That war, genocide, fascism, sexism, racism, poverty, famine, disease, corruption, ignorance, crime, oppression, torture, rape, slavery, overpopulation, exploitation, environmental degradation and global warming–just to list a few–are not the failings of ordinary women and men,” Dr. Kristenson concluded to her standing-room-only audience today. “They are the political and social policies of the patriarchs who have acquired unnatural dominion over them.”

“Did she really say this?” Paula asked. “Because you can never trust the papers to get it right.”

“They got it right.”

“Hmm. Very interesting. Very, very interesting. And would you kindly tell me why Venus Angelo is in this picture with Joan of Arc? That is you there, isn’t it?”

Venus examined Exhibit A.

That was her all right. There was Lydia, too. The three of them together again, this time to kick off Dr. Kristenson’s goodwill tour at her first brilliant engagement. The doctor was not going to get a standing ovation from Treadwell, Venus could tell. Completely different audience.

“Now Ms. Beaumont…that makes sense to me somehow, but the Assistant Vice President of Overseas Operations for Soloman-Schmitt World Oppression and Unlimited Exploitation Incorporated? I just don’t see the connection.”

“I’m on the board of directors, Paula.”

“Directors of what?”

“Of the Kristenson Foundation.”

“The Kris–oh, bullshit, Angelo. To get in their pants, or hers?”

“Hers, I suppose. I have an appointment and I don’t want to be late.”

“And who’s Claudine then, s’il vous plâit?”

“If you please, I’m going to be late.”

“Well, don’t let me make you late then.”

Venus made a quick assessment of Paula’s peach and orange dress suit. Nice choice for such a tangy personality. She had no appointment to be late for, which Treadwell would know, so that possibly accounted for the woman’s insufferably wry expression and immobility.

“Might as well resign your board duties, governor. I don’t think they’ll be of any more use to you now.”

She was so right about that. Save for an icy cordiality the other evening, Lydia hadn’t spoken to Venus or looked her way in months. Her only consolation of late was Dr. Kristenson’s unaltered attachment. That and the weekly phone calls from Paris, from savvy Madame Reseigner, Lydia’s evil twin, or if not evil then wicked, the wicked double who had done her in and who seemed determined to prove that she was just as gifted with a telephone as she was in bed.

“Your woman knows me then, pretty Venus?”

“Knows of, Claudine. Knows of. She’s not my–”

“Oh, c’est bon, très bien. Believe me.”

As seductive as it sounded, Venus couldn’t resign to such a belief. But then she wasn’t prepared to resign to anything just yet.

She enjoyed assisting the foundation and she needed her job at Soloman-Schmitt. As for what to do about Lydia, she was in a wait-and-see mode, poised for that magical moment, the ideal opportunity to explain it all away. This, she assured herself, would happen soon, perhaps once the dust had finally settled on the Goodman resignation, once the weight of that untidy matter was off the joint president’s shoulders and out of people’s minds. This strange friction between them she felt she could resolve somehow. She’d work it out in time. She couldn’t possibly have screwed up so badly that the woman would never speak to her again. Venus Angelo had never screwed up at anything.

“Resign, Angelo. You screwed up. I don’t know how you got as far as you did, but you goofed big time, the end.”

“Is that the truth, Paula? You know that for a fact?”

“Truth? You want the truth? The truth is that you have no right to be in love with Ms. Beaumont and she has no right to be hurt by your–your stupid, youthful transgressions. My only concern here is, as always, for the corporation and an executive’s photo should never be in the papers except to announce her promotion or her resignation. Never. Do you understand me?”

_____

Stupid, youthful transgressions. Stupid. Youthful. Transgressions. It had a certain ring to it. It had legs. Maybe she should ask Paula to script the apology.

_____

“What’s on your mind, Venus? You seem so preoccupied these days.”

Lunch. Frank’s. Saturday. They had resumed their tradition of not discussing Lydia which was a relief to Venus. She guessed that the doctor must have known it would be.

“It’s nothing, Dr. Kristenson. Questions of age, I think. Work, too.”

‘Dr. Kristenson.’ Always so formal. No amount of prodding could get Venus to call her Helaine and Helaine had given up insisting on it. She was Dr. Kristenson to her for eternity. It maintained the distance that Venus must have found so necessary in their relationship.

“Mmmm. Your Ms. Treadwell called to offer me an exquisitely large donation if I give back her Assistant Vice President. Did you know you were that valuable an asset to her?”

“What did you say?”

“I said you were about to be appointed the foundation’s acting executive director while I’m on tour and that I couldn’t imagine parting with you now for any amount of money. So what do you say to that?”

_____

They had deliberately kept her in the dark about the entire Goodman debacle. Even Paula had managed to keep her mouth shut about it.

But Helaine was not so out of the loop that she couldn’t glean from everyone’s dour expressions that something had happened at Soloman-Schmitt to trouble them. Even Venus who usually remained neutral regarding corporate crimes and misdemeanors seemed somewhat depressed these days. So, too, the news coverage of late was teeming with innuendo and rumors concerning the internal affairs of the firm and its hierarchy, and although Venus’ name was not one of those being bandied about, Lydia’s was, as was JP Treadwell’s, understandably.

Helaine gathered from all the bald speculation that the reporters knew no more about what was really going on than she or anyone else did, and that, if there was anything to it, the hullabaloo most likely had to do with the surprise resignation of one Silas Goodman from the board of directors, since his name was at the center of every proposed plot and because his resignation was the one detail that would eventually emerge as fact, the only fact, in fact, that Lydia and Venus were both independently willing to confirm was true. Beyond that, the subject was off limits to Helaine and their lips were sealed, and if Helaine hadn’t been so consumed with her own work and the daunting task of preparing for an international tour, she might have taken the time to confront the ladies about all the secrecy, since secrets were rarely good things to keep from or between lovers, mates and friends.

Keeping secrets is silly anyway. For famous women.

Helaine was finally getting used to Lydia’s new fame and it sometimes appeared that Lydia would, too. She wasn’t quite as careless in public as she had been only months earlier, though she still had no respect for reporters and dodged them whenever possible and she still couldn’t bear an ounce of bad press, something which everyone involved was aware of.

Helaine routinely pointed out that whenever Lydia came off as relaxed and open with the press corps she received flattering coverage from them.

“So?”

“So maybe we should examine your issue with reporters. Get some closure here.”

“They’re not reporters, Helaine. At best, they’re stenographers.”

“I see.”

It was a fame that contrasted sharply from Helaine’s, having more the elements of pop stardom and the kind of notoriety that rock stars earn as opposed to the status the president of a Fortune 500 company deserved. Perhaps that was Lydia’s major objection to it all, that it was attention she had not solicited, for qualities she had never invested much in and which she herself would never have thought to promote over and above her real talents. Maybe she felt diminished by the attention, by the constant buzz about beauty, charisma and charm. Maybe she resented Paula for shoving it to the forefront while at the same time pumping up her pretty princes with her quasi-feminist corporate rhetoric. Maybe at last she saw through shrewd Paula Treadwell and her Machiavellian ways, saw a woman as principled and as onerous as a pimp at times.