Fortune Is a Woman (23 page)

If she rushed the door would Venus prevent her from leaving? It was only a few steps. Would she hold there? She did not want to be held by her. Ever again. They locked eyes.

“Lydia, I just want to talk to you. Just talk.”

“Talk? Why don’t you talk to your…or doesn’t she speak English?”

“My what, for godsakes?”

“Your whore, you punk. Now I’ve said all I’m going to–”

“Yes, she does. She speaks English. Why are you so troubled about Claudine?”

The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. “Then go talk to Claudine or go to hell or do both. I don’t care anymore.”

“Anymore
, Mrs. Kristenson?”

“You…leave my wife out of this.”

“Gladly.”

Lydia refused to grace the remark.

“I said gladly.”

“Angelo…I heard you. Is this conversation over yet?”

“No.”

“You have more to say?”

“Yes.”

Lydia sighed. “Say it then and get it over with.”

“I love you.”

The lights buzzed and the clock ticked. Her body ached.

“Madly,” Venus added, “but you know that already. Don’t you? Why else would you punish me over Clau–”

“I don’t know anything. I’m–who is Claudine?”

“Who’s Helaine?”

“I love Helaine. You’re saying you love Claudine?”

“No, Lydia. I’m saying I love you.”

The lights buzzed, the clock ticked, Lydia needed to lie–

“I said I love you, Mrs. Kristenson.”

“I heard you,” she snapped. “I’m–Claudine knows about this? I mean you’re screwing her, am I right? Did you do her on our–”

“Our
, Lydia? Our what? What’s our?” Venus pursued. “Yes, she knows about you. Why are you so angry about Claudine? I’ve had other lov–”

“I don’t care about the men. They don’t–”

“Threaten you?” Venus cut her off with a smirk. “But Claudine does? Why, Lydia?”

Why? Venus was a formidable sentry, waiting for some fabled password. She wasn’t going to get it from Lydia. “Venus–I don’t–I’m glad you have a woman because I can tell you that you’ll never get another piece of this one. Now move.”

“Because of Claudine. Do you want to know what she looks like?”

“It’s none of my business–beautiful I suppose.”

“Very–do you want me to not love you?”

“Do I–I don’t know how to answer that. How old is she?”

“Say I don’t want you to love me, Venus.”

The lights were growing brighter; they were draining her, humming louder and louder in her ears. “How old is she?”

“Or you can say I don’t love you, Venus.”

“Angelo,
don’t
.”

“Don’t. Don’t what–love you?”

“Corner me like this. My wife is leaving me and I can’t–”

“She’s not leaving you. It’s her work, that’s all.”

“Work…for five fucking months. Don’t corner me, Angelo. I mean it.”

“Then hit the ball.”

Lydia had worried the button loose on her jacket. It hung by a thread. “How can you do this? She trusts you.”

“She does not trust me. She trusts you. Tell me, Lydia. Because I have a right to know.”

“Tell you–figure it out for yourself–I have somewhere I have to be.”

“I think I know, but you say it.”

“Venus, Helaine adores you. How can you justi–?”

“And I adore her. Say you don’t love me and I’ll let you go.”

“I–” she couldn’t. “I love Helaine. Now let me go.”

“And I don’t love you–say it.”

“Venus.”

“Or say I love you, Ve–”

“Venus!”

“Or all of the above, Lydia.”

Lydia glanced down. She held a button in her palm. “I’m–are we done here?”

“Not yet–say it.”

“I don’t know what to say…leave me alone.”

“Well, what the hell do you know, Lydia Beaumont? And when did you know it?”

“Goddamnit! I know only that I don’t want you fucking that woman–now open the door!”

Venus placed her hand on the knob. “Why?”

“Why what? Why do I want to leave? Why am I ruining my clothes? Unh-uh, Venus. Open it. This conversation is over.”

“Why don’t you want me fucking that woman? Tell me first.”

“And that’ll make a difference? Because it won’t, you know? I still passionately love my wife and you’re still a punk, the likes of which I’ve had before.”

“Never!” Venus interjected. “That’s not true and you know it.”

Lydia slid the button into her coat pocket and made to leave. “Yes it is true. It’s a punk who picks up strangers, who would take a woman to bed she doesn’t lo–”

“Oh, really? And if you don’t love me, what does that make you?”

“That’s…not the same.”

“Oh, another difference? Well, it’s
my
birthday this time and I want you–”

“Call your whore, Angelo. I told you nev–”

“Then I will! I will, Lydia, with pleasure. Sheer fucking pleasure. Especially knowing that you don’t want me to and that you hate the idea of it, even though you don’t want me or love me. Especially knowing that you know she’s beautiful and that she’s younger than you–yes she is–and that she has the decency, whore or not, to say my name when I’m fucking her, unlike you, and to kiss me when I’m fucking her, unlike you, and to hit the fucking ball when I’m fucking her, unlike–”

Crraack!

Taken by Force

Anatomy of a slap, by Venus Angelo, Vice President of Overseas Operations, Soloman-Schmitt, Incorporated. You hear it first. And it sounds like a castanet. Then you feel it. And it stings.

She was a weaker woman than she ought to be, Venus thought, feeling her eyes tearing up, the lump in her throat, the stinging cheek, but she was determined not to cry. She had not been slapped since she was a little girl. Like then, she knew immediately that she had earned it. A bad temper, a string of insults, speaking the truth in the vicious kind of way that nobody really likes. Taunting.

Lydia had never slapped anyone before, though there were numerous situations in which she might have and one very near miss with Rio Joe. It was her preference, rather, to throw things, which she might have done here had she been holding anything in her hand.

Years from now, when Venus Angelo’s psychotherapist asks her the question, “How old were you when you lost your innocence?” she will answer, “Three weeks shy of my thirtieth birthday,” but she will decline to elaborate beyond that. In the present, however, she has learned something valuable. That honor is not just about being true to oneself. That it often involves being true to another.

So the transition from girlhood to womanhood was, for Venus, a painful impact, marked by the sound of a castanet. It was like a death in a way, an injury and then pictures flashing before her eyes. Not ones of her own life, to be sure, because she wasn’t dying even if she wished she was, but scenes from the movies instead, images of distressed damsels and sullied dames, their lovely hands cutting through the air, some bare, some bejeweled, some gloved, all slapping. She saw a multitude of slappers, glorious in their feminine revenge, retrieving their dignity with a flick of the wrist. She saw the slapped with their handsome faces, their disheveled hair, eyes blinking with surprise, some in pain, some with anger. She had always doubted those scenes. Why would a woman slap a man?

Venus pushed her hair back, blinked the tears away. Lydia’s expression was a perfect marriage of shock and grief. She stood transfixed in front of her, as beautiful as any of them, holding the offending hand like an emptied revolver.

She would come to her senses soon, Venus knew from the movies, and slip by her, perhaps exiting through an unguarded door. How did the scene play out, she quickly tested herself. A gallery of cads and rogues paraded in her mind, every one of them drawing the same conclusion, the one she would have to draw, too, having nothing else to draw upon.

She seized the woman and kissed her.

And then, since there was no resistance to it, she kissed her again.

Compelled

A job in sales with no salary, no benefits. Life can be hard with only a twenty percent commission. He would have to hustle, Joseph Rios could see, to get back the things he was accustomed to having.

Selling ad space in skin magazines was nothing to write home about and he wouldn’t, of course, but there were some fine-looking women at PM Entertainments. Better prospects than in finance, he told himself, soured on that whole industry.

“Celia,” he had crooned to the fifth-floor secretary, minutes before his interview. “Oh, wow. That’s my mother’s name,” he lied. She blushed just like a woman he used to know.

Rio Joe had them all lined up–or he would, once he had shed that pale skin and his two-hundred-dollar suit, that gaunt jailbird aura he still wore six months out of prison. He was going to dye those grays, too. Gray hair on a young man was a romantic liability, he felt. He needed to broaden his possibilities.

Probation over, he was out of the halfway house, living in a humble two room walk-up on the waterfront. That wouldn’t be for long he promised the gray man in the mirror, mister lean and mean. It was time for some tanning booths and a workout. And a trip down to the Caymans for a small advance.

_____

“Who’s that, Mommy? She’s pretty.”

The child had a good eye. “Well…I don’t know. She is though, isn’t she?”

In Stone Magazine
featured one stunning Venus Angelo on the cover this week. No veils, fully clad, small blurb on the inside saying only that she worked for Soloman-Schmitt, the new vice president of something or other. Sharon wanted to know more about the young woman.

So did Helen. “You don’t know her?” she asked incredulously. Her mother knew everyone, whether or not she cared for them.

“I don’t know her,
yet
, Helen. Not yet.”

_____

“Because a martini is not a comfort food.”

Delilah disagreed, but she nodded understandingly. She and Helaine were having lunch and the maitre de was trying not to eavesdrop.

“Am I right, Harry?” Helaine inquired with a wink.

“Certainly,” he replied. “Doesn’t everyone know that oysters are more comforting than olives?”

“Indeed! No oysters either, Del–Harry, I expect you to back me up on that.”

“I wasn’t aware,” Delilah admitted, when Harry had returned to the bar.

“Well, it’s not a big problem. It’s just a developing problem, maybe. Or only a potential one. She hates her job, I’m sure you know.”

“She has. Even before she met you. We’ll be good, Helaine. Trust us.”

“I do, Del. I do. You know, she thinks…well she…has issues about my leaving.”

“She’s a child, Helaine. Always will be.”

“Mmmm.”

_____

“Mr. Jones, a pleasure to be talking to you after so long. Who is Venus Angelo?”

“Ms. Chambers. You working rags again? We can arrange–”

“No, no, I’m looking for Venus Angelo. How can I have her for dinner, please?”

“Ah, Venus Angelo. Very tasty. Better take a number.”

“Who is she, Sebastion? You know her?”

“Ummm…sort of.”

“Oh, you shit. What’s she like?”

“Baby, she’s a natural. Not all mine, though. Little tricky there, sometimes.”

“She’s married, you mean? I don’t have a problem with that.”

It was coming back to him. Kristenson. Chambers. Beaumont. He had said too much. “No, not married. Just…hot for someone else. I can’t help you, Sharon. She wouldn’t like me to.”

“Then where can I find her?”

“Can’t. She’s around, though. You could run into her if you knew where to look.”

“Sebastion, you owe me.”

“Do I?”

“Probably.”

_____

Flowers for Venus Angelo filled the entire elevator. Lydia let the doors close without entering. She knew where they were going. They had been pouring in all week.

Paula had asked JP Beaumont to speak to Venus about the cover photo, to impress upon the woman how unimpressed she was with it and to inform her that a ragazine was not the appropriate place to announce an executive’s promotion. Lydia had agreed to do it with no sincere ambition for the project, more with the aim of heading Paula off and giving the vice president some breathing room than anything else. But she had yet to speak to her.

Venus was out of bounds for Lydia. A smoking gun.

“You spoke to her?”

“I…yes. She’s sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“It doesn’t have to, does it?”

“Paula, she gave her mea culpa. What more do you want? She can’t stop circulation.” She felt useless today. “I feel useless today. I’m going home.”

“You’re depressed. Stay here.”

Lydia turned and faced Paula. “How do you know?”

“I can see it. You’ve worn black for days. When does she leave?”

“Saturday.”

“Oh.” Paula took her glasses off and threw her head back. “Ms. Beaumont, I must say, you act as if she’s leaving you. Is she leaving you?”

“No, I think…not.”

“Well, what do you think she’s doing?”

“I think she’s bored with me. I think she’s flying away because she’s bored.”

“Lydia, that’s…that’s absurd. Are you having problems at home?”

“Problems? In the bedroom, that means?”

“No, in the kitchen. Yes or no?”

“Paula, of course not.”

“Then why would she be bored with you? How could anybody be bored with you, anyway? You’re so…so bizarre.”

“A stockbroker bizarre?”

“You’re hardly just a stockbroker, Ms. Beaumont. To anyone.” Paula went to the bar. She was curious what role Venus played in all this confusion. “Get you anything?” she asked, filling two glasses with ice and rattling them to temptation.

“Scotch, no water.”

“Scotch it is.”

Lydia watched her solemnly. Helaine would taste the liquor, she suddenly worried. Had she really worn black for days?

“Scotch on the rocks,” Paula said. “Bottoms up.”

“Cheers.”

“You slept together, the three of you?”

First drink all week. “Paula…that’s private.” It felt good.