Fortune Is a Woman (39 page)

Even Kate was confounded. “Honestly, I’d tell you if I knew.”

Paula sneered contemptuously. “No you wouldn’t, but kudos for a convincing performance, kid. Go back to work.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And Fitz-Simone…”

“Yes, Ms. Treadwell.”

“Take over for her. Don’t let anything pile up.”

“Yes, ma’am. She’s covered.”

But VP Angelo didn’t keep them in suspense for very much longer and by Friday’s closing bell, hope, which had already been so fragile, was now completely shattered.

“I resign,” her e-mail read. Subject: “Splendor.”

Lydia packed up her briefcase and went home to crumble. Circus clown was looking better and better.

She did not trouble Helaine with these recent developments. Their conversation was light and breezy, about love and food and the Keagans’ pending dinner party. There was no point in discussing work or Venus or Paula. Helaine had enough on her mind as it was and Lydia didn’t think she would find the situation quite as depressing as she did. They hung up quickly and Lydia tried to unwind in the Jacuzzi before going out for the evening.

Every part of her seethed at Paula’s role in the tragedy and her mind was swimming with those things one finds oneself wishing had been said at the time. Lost opportunities and insults aside, there would be a day, Lydia swore to herself, when she would let it rip and Paula would get the cheerful earful she deserved. But in the here and the now Venus was gone. How she could continue at Soloman-Schmitt without her, without knowing she was there, not necessarily beside her, but, Jesus, at least in the same building…she would have to keep that disappointment unnamed and secret, bury it somewhere deep inside her where there was no voice to express it, in a place no one else could ever find.

She dressed in black and arrived at the Keagans’ late, too late to show off her slides of Madrid, but just in time to be seated with the other guests and to raise a glass in toast.

“To friendship,” Kay said.

Friendship was the group response, though the stares Lydia received from Anna Grisholm all evening were anything but friendly. Anything but.

“I’ve decided it’s the yearning look in your eyes that makes you so attractive, Ms. Beaumont,” she said, as Lydia was issuing thank-yous and goodnights and preparing to leave. “That and their beautiful color.”

Despite the usual come-on there was an air of resignation in Anna’s tone. Lydia welcomed the change. “Thank you, Anna. That’s very kind of you.”

“Like sapphires,” Anna said, taking the liberty of walking her to the elevator. “Has anyone ever told you that besides me? That your eyes are like sapphires?”

“I–uh–well–”

“Yes, I bet they have. That reminds me,” Anna said, preventing the door from closing. “I have something that belongs to you.”

“Me?”

“You,” Anna replied, searching around in her pocket. “It would seem, Ms. Beaumont, that I am forever coming upon your valuables.”

“My valuables?” Lydia said, holding out her hand. “But–?”

Anna placed the sapphire earrings in Lydia’s palm and saw her face go white. “They are yours, aren’t they?”

“I–” her hand was trembling. She clutched the earrings in a fist and shoved them into her pocket. “They…they were…they’re…goodnight, Ms. Grisholm.”

“Goodnight,” Anna said, letting the door slide shut. “Mrs. Kristenson.”

Opposed

In the ensuing weeks following Venus Angelo’s resignation, working with Paula had become a nightmare and although Venus hadn’t enumerated in her e-mail the exact reasons for her departure or, for that matter, her future plans, Lydia knew that Paula blamed her personally for the catastrophe. Her and that den of iniquity, the Kristenson Foundation.

“It’s not a done deal,” VP Treadwell said this morning, repeating a declaration she had been making ever since Venus first went on the lam. “The board has indicated they’re willing to wink and look the other way if she’ll reconsider. Besides, an e-mail isn’t an official resignation. Is she working for your wife or what? I have a right to know if she is.”

The subject of Venus Angelo was by now a tedious one for Lydia. Tedious and painful. It was very likely that Venus would be working for Helaine. She was aware that the two had had many phone conversations concerning it, but that no decision had been reached yet. The young woman was in “psychic turmoil and transition,” and “up to her elbows with the process of discarding her excess baggage,” Helaine confided last week. “But everything’s fine.”

Everything’s fine except that everything is not fine. “The board should be searching for a new Vice-Op, Paula. Venus has resigned. The end.”

“Oh, crap. CRAP. I knew when I picked her she was too young. That was always on my mind, you know. Her youth.”

“Age is not the problem here, Paula. I suspect it has more to do with ethics and ethos than age.”

“Oh, do you? You mean sexual ethics, Ms. Highfalutin? Forgive me for being ignorant and old fashioned, but what precisely are the sexual ethics governing a ménage a–”

“Have a nice day, Paula. Keep nagging like this and you’ll get my resignation, too. Only I’ll be certain to put it in writing so there won’t be any room for doubt.”

That was how she was keeping Paula at bay these days, preventing the gale storm of I-told-you-sos from blowing in with her own threats to quit.

Lydia was as disenchanted with work as ever, more so now that Venus was no longer there, and she couldn’t condemn her former assistant from getting out when she did, while she was still young and stress-free and before gin martinis became the main staple of her diet. She was brave to do it. Soloman-Schmitt was a snake pit.

But if the rest of life was to be spent chasing after Helaine on some foreign shore, playing air tag with her and howdy stranger in hotel rooms, what on earth would she do with herself without work? Sit around all day waiting for her phone call?

Lydia had no intention of making good on her threats to retire. At least not anytime soon. But she didn’t want Paula to know this.

_____

Is you is or is you ain’t my baby…
Venus was blasting old jazz. Chillin’.

Paula was on her way over. She stopped at the corner stakeout to interrogate the rumpled fellow in the silly trench coat. “Are you my man?” she asked.

“Um…who are you?”

“Who–Treadwell!”

He scratched his head and pointed across the street. “That guy over there, I think.”

“Wha–then who are you?”

“Look lady–”

“Don’t lady me! I’m no lady. You’re tailing Ms. Angelo?”

“Um…yes, ma’am.”

“For whom?”

He kicked at an invisible object on the sidewalk and cursed under his breath. “Goodman.”

“Goodman? Get out of here or I’ll have you arrested.”

“But–”

“Scram, I said!”

He scrammed.

Across the street, the man in the alley was not hers either, though the quarry was the same.

“Your guy’s in the diner.”

“Mine is? What the hell’s going on here?” Paula demanded. “Who are you working for?”

“Can’t say. You’ll find your guy in the diner, though. I saw him there at lunch time and he hasn’t come out since.”

Paula produced her cell phone. “At the count of three I’m going to dial 911 if I don’t get some answers here. One…two…”

“Chambers–I work for Chambers.”

“Sharon Chambers?”

He nodded.

She was taken aback by the implications. “Not anymore you don’t–capice?”

“Capice.”

She found her guy in the diner all right, double fisting coffee and donuts. “I’m Treadwell,” she informed him with disgust. “You work for me?”

“Yeah,” he said, wiping jelly from the side of his face. “Yeah.”

“Good…you’re fired.”

He snickered and gulped his coffee. “Okey-doke.”

Paula spun on her heel. “Bill me,” she called over her shoulder.

He snickered again. “Okey-doke.”

Okey-doke, up at Fort Angelo’s Venus was running low on supplies and was just thinking of sending out the wagon trains when she got a buzz from the lobby.

“Paula Treadwell, Ms. Angelo. Should I send her up?”

“Oh–you know I–oh god, I–yeah, send her up.” A decision she regretted the instant she made it.

“Well, well, well…and how is Venus Angelo? Citizen Angelo?”

“I’m sorry, Paula, but you should have seen it coming.”

“Of course, of course…look, I’ve emptied the vacant lots and darkened alleyways…no one’s following you anymore and I can assure–”

“Too little, too late. It’s over with, Paula.” Paula was wearing chartreuse today…
it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that…
chartreuse and burgundy…
doo wah doo wah…doo wah doo wah…
with matching two-tone shoes and snazzy eyeglass frames, a nifty neon carnation. “I’ve made up my mind,” Venus said, feeling her mouth go sour. “It’s too late.”

Paula took this in stride. “Good,” she said, making herself at home in a leather sofa-chair. “And now what does brilliant Venus Angelo plan to do with herself? Chase windmills for a living? Any money in that, Venus? Chasing windmills?”

“Some.”

“Some…and that will pay for all this? For those clothes you’re wearing? You’ve got a nice place here, Venus. Chasing Lydia Beaumont didn’t hurt you any if you got all this to show for it. Even if–you catch my drift?”

“This isn’t about Lydia Beaumont.”

“Bullshit.”

Venus sat opposite her on the couch, legs crossed, arms folded. Silent.

“Anyway. Ackerly says–”

“I don’t care what Ackerly says.”

Paula eyed her thoughtfully. “Do I get to know your plans or is this something I have to wait to read about?”

“Full-time directorship of the Kristenson Foundation. Money’s not too bad for a charity and the tour’s–”

“I don’t want to hear about Dr. Kristenson and don’t tell me it’s not about Dr. Kristenson and don’t tell me it’s not about Lydia Beaumont. Don’t you think, if it’s distance you need, that you’re not going far enough away? Why don’t you go somewhere where she can’t find you?”

“Paula–”

“We can send you anywhere you want to go. Hong Kong. Bangkok.
Paris.
”

“Paris? What are you saying?”

“Soloman-Schmitt is prepared to send you anywhere you want to go. That’s how important you are to us.”

Venus shut her eyes.

“Don’t blow it, Angelo. Pick a place. We can send your family with you, too. The whole shebang.”

Her family in Paris! Venus couldn’t even imagine that.

Fortune In the Affairs of Women and How It May Be Opposed

Five o’clock and THANK-GOD-IT’S-FRIDAY. Zillions of girls and boys and women and men have ceased to be productive. They’re chucking their pencils, kicking up their heels and letting their hair down again.

Friday’s going to be a very big day for the Beaumonts. And for the Beaumont-Kristenson’s. For Team Kristenson. For Venus Angelo. For Paula Treadwell. Delilah Lewiston. And for many other beings just like them, unwittingly sucked into the vortex of fortune and happenstance.

Marilyn Beaumont began what would be a long Friday at the side of the road in a car that just wouldn’t go, stranded there while Roy tried to determine what was wrong with it. He didn’t have much time for tinkering–Marilyn had a flight to catch because her John Hancock was required on the amicable settlement she had reached with her soon-to-be-former husband and, to those ends, they would be rendezvousing this afternoon at Stanley Kandinsky’s office in the city, at which time she would relinquish Edward’s ring.

Marilyn, like her daughter, did not care for airplanes, but she had waited an eternity for this day and was eager to get the darn thing over with. Driving there or flying there was only the difference of a few hours, but that had seemed a lifetime to her, so she had, weeks ago, bravely made up her mind to fly into the city and it was now too late in the morning to change those plans.

Missing the plane was completely out of the question. She would not miss that plane. She sat in the passenger seat of her sedan with her hands folded and her face expectant, counting on the man who was jiggling the wires under her hood. She had the right of reliance here. He had already proven he could fix anything.

One…two…three…
vrrrrrroooom!

Paula’s day began, as usual, well before she arrived to work. Juggling two cells and a land line while devouring a power breakfast, she was in typical form for her Friday, which ran from this point disturbingly smooth into the evening.

Venus was still a loose end that needed tying up and Paula was eager to settle this business. The kid was set to return from her apartment search in Paris sometime today and she had promised to call by week’s end with a decision. A very final decision, because if Paula could clinch the deal, she intended to bind Venus up with Soloman-Schmitt in a ten-year contract. Venus Angelo would be her successor since JP Beaumont would retire someday soon, sit out the rest of her days on a yacht somewhere counting clouds and stars and moonbeams with her blond, so why kick that dead horse around anymore? God, what a waste of an MBA! What a rip-off! What a horrible disgrace to the profession!

But anyway, enough of that. “Okey-doke,” she heard herself say as she kissed Dickie on the cheek before rushing out to the chopper. “Wish me luck.”

“Luck,” he said cheerfully. “Luck, luck, luck, luck, luck.”

Speaking of luck and Lydia Beaumont, she was just that moment getting lucky again in Honolulu, in one big finale that would wrap up three days and nights of uninterrupted island ecstasy. The couple was, at last, together on native soil, albeit only briefly.

Friday afternoon Lydia would be flying home and Helaine would have to quit sunny Hawaii to hurry on toward Melbourne for a one-week stint in Australia. Carlos was pushing hard for today’s departure because he was trying to keep everyone from completely succumbing to the jet lag that had descended on the team back in Montreal. Sun, surf and pineapples was having a therapeutic effect on everyone, he was happy to see, but another day of inactivity and he might end up with nothing but a bunch of lotus-eaters on his hands. Lotus-eaters in grass skirts and leis–ye gods!