Fortune Is a Woman (27 page)

Splish. Splash.
She sipped her French champagne and nibbled cheese from the platter.

It had been a cold trip marked by very warm receptions and she was dog-tired, fighting the desire to sleep. She counted out the hours on her soapy fingers. Lydia would have to board a plane by eight in the morning to arrive at the appointed hour. Eight in the evening here would be two in the afternoon Lydia time. The dark might throw her. If jet lag didn’t get her right away, she might not be hungry for dinner till midnight. She might not want to go to bed till three, maybe four in the morning…

_____

Swiss timepieces are everything they’re claimed to be, so the concierge knew there was nothing wrong with his watch when Lydia Beaumont arrived at his desk two hours ahead of schedule.

Dr. Kristenson’s private secretary didn’t answer his telephone and there was no answer as well in the doctor’s room. The doctor may be sleeping the man thought, not having seen her leave, but that was no reason to prevent Madame Beaumont from going upstairs. He gave her a spare key and showed her to the elevator.

“Here, kitty-kitty,” Lydia called to the tousled blond fast asleep in the featherbed. She had woken at four this morning and gone straight to the airport, too wired to wait for an eight o’clock flight. “I bear gifts,” she whispered. She set a box of duty-free chocolates and a bucket of red roses on the night stand and crawled in under the comforter to count sheep beside her wife.

“Meow,” Helaine purred, half awake. “What time…?”

“Bedtime–is this spot taken?”

“Well…normally that’s reserved for my wife.”

“Lucky woman. What about here?”

“Hmmm. Now that we might be able to negotiate.”

Dinner was presented at nine, but it went cold before they got to it.

_____

Steak au poivre and young red potatoes beats the hell out of wieners and sauerkraut any day, even at room temperature, Helaine thought, reclining in front of the fireplace with her dinner, three in the morning.

Her blood had finally thawed and she could feel it flowing once again into her extremities. She was warmed enough to lounge bare-legged in her hotel room. That she did, dressed only in Lydia’s overcoat which she draped extravagantly around her shoulders. Lydia’s outfit was much more the fashion understatement. She wore a blanket and a peaceful expression.

They talked and ate and played footsie.

“He’s slowly coming around to the idea that he can’t claim the moral high ground here,” Helaine said, in reference to the Daddy Beaumont affair. She had called Edward twice on the topic of divorce, using the word as often as she could think of in her sentences. She hoped the repetition would familiarize him with the concept, but he had a stubborn mindset regarding his unique marriage and she was afraid to convey her hunch to Lydia, that he would never willingly let Marilyn go. “It will take time, I think,” she said, summoning an optimistic tone. “He adamantly insists the two of them had a special understanding.”

Lydia couldn’t bring herself to discuss any of it with him and she had left for Europe without phoning him or returning his calls, something which she felt extremely guilty about. “The press will eat him alive, I hope you mentioned.”

“I haven’t brought up that possibility yet. Hopefully it will occur to him on his own.”

Lydia had not been this angry with her father since she was a girl; her mother had never disappointed her before. She had had a special understanding about their marriage, too, with both her parents, but the emergence of a suitor had thrown her balance off and now she didn’t know how to act with either of them anymore. Everything was different. “I can’t believe this happened,” she said wistfully. “You know?”

The doctor knew everything. She watched Lydia tug at her earlobe, something she did whenever she was perplexed. Tugging at her earlobes, blushing, tripping over her words, she was a wellspring of revelation to Dr. Kristenson, transparent and refreshing, completely natural. She doubted she could ever leave her for five months again. “Should I paint them?” she teased her, aware that Lydia’s interest had shifted once more to all things sensual, her attention centered for the moment on Helaine’s naked feet.

Lydia flashed an impish grin. The sun would be up soon. She wanted to be in bed when it rose. With her wife.

“Black toenails perhaps?” Helaine joked, wriggling her toes. “To match my chilblains?”

She reached for her with her feet. Lydia grabbed her by the ankles.

“Lana, what are we listening to?”

“Rachmaninoff, Vocalese. You like?”

“Very pretty. These, too.”

“There’s a concert tomorrow after my speech. Violin and orchestra.”

The bottoms of her feet were smooth, the ankles smooth, her calves soft and warm. Lydia cupped them in the palms of her hands. They felt like ripened fruit. “I’m going to that, too?”

“Yes, I’d–darling, what are you doing?”

“Practicing.”

“Yow–what?”

“Pizzicato. You like?”

“Ahh…maestro.”

_____

Game over. The panty raid on Soloman-Schmitt had been effectively thwarted and the would-be conquerors forced to retreat with their tails between their legs. It was time to declare victory and move on. VP Angelo was given the honors.

She was playing it by ear these days, wearing two hats, being faithful to everyone, stuck for the moment to a crummy podium at the behest of Paula Treadwell. After this press conference she had to scoot over to the Kristenson Foundation to meet with its board of directors for a briefing. From there she was going to meet Anna Grisholm at Cicero’s for a very quick highball. The woman had worn her emphatic no’s down to stumbling maybes with her flattery and flowers, a sexy voice which she was not hesitant to employ in the service of begging. Sharon Chambers, however, was not so successful. That one Venus wouldn’t go near with a ten-foot pole.

“Soloman-Schmitt,” Venus went on, “is a staunch proponent of equal rights, applying rigid yet attainable standards in the hiring and promotion of its employees, standards based on merit and excellence alone. It’s a tradition, we believe, that has made us the model company for modern times.” Who wrote this? she wondered. “A progressive corporation that considers itself a twenty-first century sentinel in the war against inequality.” Jasmine would boo if she could hear this jargon. She wiped the sardonic expression off her face and continued. “As a matter of policy, we do not entertain, engage in, nor tolerate discrimination of any form, be it gender-based, race-based, age-based, or otherwise. Let us be unequivocal here. We do not condone sexual harassment, do not conceal it, and do not permit it to go unpunished if we detect it.”

Paula could see that the press was just as enamored of Prince Angelo as they were of Prince Beaumont, though she now knew the former well enough to say she was, ideologically speaking, worse than the latter could ever dream of being. And she was so insolent at times, always acting as if she was doing the company a favor. Like today.

Venus found Paula’s probing eye and searched the index card for her place again.

“Rumors of rampant sexual harassment of our employees by their coworkers and supervisors and a vast conspiracy to subvert those employees in their efforts to air their grievances are abhorrent to Soloman-Schmitt. These allegations have been thoroughly investigated, internally and through outside agencies, and with the exception of a few isolated incidents in the past, which have all been addressed and redressed, we have found such claims to be, essentially, baseless and without substance. Although, in the course of our inquiries, a few extreme cases were brought to our attention, it is important to understand that Soloman-Schmitt employs tens of thousands of individuals worldwide and that a few isolated incidents, while certainly regrettable to us, do not represent a pattern of abuse by the corporation nor a climate within it rife for discrimination.”

No applause.

“We will in the future, as we have in the past, continue to be vigilant with this issue and aggressive in protecting the right of any employee of this corporation to work and achieve in an atmosphere that is both open and diverse
and
friendly and professional, qualities critical for thriving in today’s evolving marketplace. Those are the values and principles that this corporation is founded upon and determined to uphold. The values and principles that have made Soloman-Schmitt a trusted leader in the world of business and finance for more than a century. We thank you for your time today. That’ll be all.”

_____

“And last but not least, Dr. Kristenson is happy to report that there’s been a tropical heat wave of sorts since Ms. Beaumont arrived in Europe. I’m glad to say that her recent e-mails have a more ebullient tone than those of the past few weeks.”

It was unlikely, Venus knew, that the doctor had intended this information to be shared at a board meeting. The guy was a sap to make such a disclosure and the board members were saps, too, applauding him for it. And Ms. Beaumont was the biggest sap of them all. Venus wanted to call her up and say so. She smiled copecetic, her hands strangling the notepad she held in her lap.

She was already half an hour late by the time she was able to extricate herself from the board meeting. She rushed the cabby to Cicero’s, confidant that Anna would still be there.

“Thank you for the flowers,” she said, out of breath. She had forgotten how attractive Ms. Grisholm was. “I’m sorry I’m–I was in meetings.”

“Thanks for coming. I’d almost given up hope.”

“I’m truly sor–just cognac, please.” It was loud in here this afternoon. “Just a cognac,” Venus repeated for the waiter.

Anna had been waiting for her date for over forty-five minutes and she had endured the din of Cicero’s for as long as she could stand. It would be a waste of an important asset if she was forced to shout in order to be heard. “I’m sound sensitive,” she whispered into Venus’ ear. “Is it possible we could go someplace quieter than this?”

Venus eyed her guardedly. The woman was hot in that fur coat, beneath it only a cashmere sweater, gray and scooped, and beneath the sweater…nothing. She had caught the scent of perfume in that chestnut hair, a wave of it having fallen across her face, on purpose Venus guessed.

Heart-faced with high cheek bones and small, impertinent features, Anna had the look of a precious doll, pug-nosed and pouting, girlish, save for those large and indiscreet brown eyes. Venus knew if she laid the doll down her eyes would, like a doll’s, close automatically, though, like a doll, she would not really be sleeping. The warmth of her leg against hers was seeping into her trouser. She shivered involuntarily. It was cold outside, too cold to roller skate or jog anymore. How Venus hated to be cold or inactive. “Where did you have in mind, Anna?”

Anna shrugged appealingly. “I’m flexible.”

A snifter of cognac was delivered. Her leg was warm.

_____

Flexibility, the zeitgeist of the day. Or three days to be precise, ending with Sunday when Lydia would have to fly back to reality.

She likes the opera, but
she
likes Sinatra. So she takes her to hear violins and
she
listens to CDs in the hotel room after the concert. She’s a morning person, but
she’s
not–she’s just used to getting up by seven and would really rather stay in bed past nine if she had her druthers. She lets
her
sleep until ten and lies beside her daydreaming. She’s wild for finger food and clarified butter and fine red wine, but
she’s
in the habit of chasing dry gin with a medium rare T-bone steak. She settles for a dry white wine with escargot in a puff pastry and nibbles
her
fingers as she feeds her the mushrooms off a sirloin steak seared European which, she claims, melts in the mouth like butter. She prefers IT ideally in private, lying down on satin sheets and feather pillows, but
she’s
not so picky. Pressed for time and in the interest of compromise, she expands the possibilities to include sitting down and standing up and
she
happily explores all the available options (taxicabs, limousines, elevators, bathrooms, etceteras).

“This is the joint president of a Fortune five hundred company?” Paula asked incredulously. She handed her assistant yesterday’s Daily.

“Double-jointed,” he said. “The double-jointed president of Soloman-Schmitt Inc.”

“You find this entertaining, John?”

“Whatever it takes sometimes. Don’t you agree?” Company shares had ejaculated into the stratosphere again. Soloman-Schmitt was well on its way to becoming a constellation. “Give her credit. At least it’s her wife.”

“Oh god, could you imagine?”

He tried. “I don’t think it can get much worse than this,” he finally said. “This,” he declared, holding up the paper, “is just about as bad as it–oh, Ms. Angelo. I was just leaving. Ahem…VP Angelo’s here, Ms. Treadwell.”

She saw her. “Come in, come in.”

He hid the newspaper under his arm and closed the door behind him.

Venus had already seen it. “You called?”

“I did. Do you have a dictionary, Angelo?”

“I have a dictionary. You wanted to borrow my–”

“Is the word ‘discreet’ in yours? Because I know it’s in mine if you need to look it up.”

“Oh. I’ll have to get back to you on that. This is Silas Goodman again?”

“No, and don’t be imperious with me. You want to grow up and become president?”

“No.”

“No what–grow up?”

“Paula, you’re following me?”

“To where would I have you followed? The Lavender Lane? Why would I do that, Angelo? How could I if you were being discreet?–there’s that word again.”

Venus was bent out of shape today. Paula was making it worse. “I didn’t know discretion was a requirement for the presidency,” she stated acerbically. “I’d hate to break with tradi–”

“I’m your role model here and
I’m discreet!”