Fortune Is a Woman (6 page)

“And I prefer that VP Beaumont never know about this conversation,” Paula warned, preparing to leave. “Ideally I’d have your new office situated on the moon, but I fear that wouldn’t be enough of an obstacle, considering how frequently she visits there.” Paula hesitated at the door. She searched Venus’ face. It was blank. “Enjoy your day, Angelo,” she cast over her shoulder.

“Thank you again, Ms. Treadwell.”

“You’re welcome, I’m sure.”

(Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ms. Treadwell. May I have another? Kick that is.)

Paula was giving her a private office. More money. More duties, too, since apparently she didn’t have enough already to keep her busy. Venus had suspected she was in for it when Paula had begun referring to Lydia as “the Duchess of Valentine,” used here as an unnecessarily salacious comparison to the very able, yet most unfortunate Cesare Borgia, the Duke of Valentine. This had made Venus visibly cringe.

“If you love the woman,” Paula then stated, “stand down. Don’t be the cause of her ruin.” She had rightly surmised that there would be no response to that and sought to continue her inquisition. “Now, what happened to ruin our sword yielding Duke then, when his father died?”

Venus shoved her chair back. She was weary of pushy Paula Treadwell and her endless grilling. Grillings at work, in elevators, in restaurants, even at Cicero’s. She knew this material from university and was tired of proving and reproving it. She glared at Paula, speechless.

“Tell me, Angelo. What precipitated the fall of–?”

“Men only injure through hate or fear,” Venus had sparred.

Paula thrust back. “Yes, Angelo.
Men
.”

Venus coughed. (Touché you fascist, chauvinistic asshole.) “But isn’t it better to be loved than to be hated and despised?”

“Hmmph–I know only that it was better to be the Duke of Milan than the Duke of Valentine. Besides, I don’t believe you will ever hate or despise our Duchess.”

Venus refused to acknowledge the remark.

“Or fear,” Paula added. “Now where are we? Oh, yes, Alexander the Sixth. Please tell me so I know, what happened to undo his otherwise fortunate son? Most significantly, what didn’t the Duke do that he might have, or in hindsight, that he should have?”

“I do not lov–”

“Don’t you even dare, Angelo. You’re both too good for that.”

Venus folded her hands in front of her. “Okay,” she said, her voice constricted.

“You don’t, you don’t. Then why did you get a divorce?”

Did. Didn’t. Might have. What should she say? “He failed to intervene in the appointment of Pope Julius the Second,” Venus replied in a monotone.

She sat like that long after Paula had left.

Paula was a shrewd woman. She could both giveth and taketh away whenever she saw fit. That didn’t surprise Venus too much. In all, she guessed, a visit like the one she had just received had been inevitable, perhaps long overdue. She wasn’t terribly surprised. Just pissed.

The real surprise had arrived well before Paula Treadwell. Venus couldn’t believe that Lydia had come for lunch after what had happened this morning at the club.

The two had met for a couple of light sets and a few laps in the pool. The first time in months. Afterwards, VP Beaumont had lost her footing getting dressed at the lockers. Probably the knee acting up. Venus was beside her when she slipped and had swiftly caught her in the crook of one arm, in a catch so precarious that it required her to assist Lydia in standing on her own again. Perhaps that’s why Lydia didn’t struggle when Venus instead pulled her closer and placed her free hand on the small of her back. Perhaps that’s also why Lydia didn’t object when the grip tightened around her waist and she found herself locked in Venus Angelo’s arms.

The sensation of Lydia suddenly relaxing her body, resting her hands on her shoulders, of her damp skin, of the dark hair hanging in her face and brushing against hers–Venus held her longer, way longer than she should have.

Putting the moves on Lydia Beaumont. Venus had acted both impetuously and cautiously, expecting Lydia to extricate herself, to coldly thank her and resume dressing. Yet the woman only tossed the hair from her eyes and gazed up at her curiously, as if wondering what came next. Venus stood love struck, wondering herself. She spent the next eternity contemplating whether she should kiss her captive, but failed to do it.

If, as they say, success has many fathers, then how can failure be an orphan? Wouldn’t it be better said that failure is a bastard? Venus stood quietly gazing into the long, dark tunnel of her gym locker as Lydia hurriedly finished dressing.

Failure is definitely a bitch. She watched Lydia fleeing from her, halting for a split second at the exit as if she might speak, but then abandoning the locker room without even saying goodbye. Venus figured she’d never hear from VP Beaumont again.

She was wrong.

So they lunched together separated by a desk, chatting and laughing as they typically would. They talked shop just as casually as if nothing had ever happened and neither woman brought up the embrace. It was just as if it hadn’t happened.

Oh, but it did, it did. Venus placed her hands in her lap. It sure did. She wished she could lie down somewhere soft, somewhere that smelled a trifle more feminine than Kendle’s office. Maybe in a hammock near a garden. Maybe on a devilishly hot, hot beach. She surveyed the drab, uninspiring office.

A bed of feathers, some perfumed sheets, satin hands touching her shoulders, a kiss. These were the luxuries Venus allowed herself to dream of now, her hands folded as if in prayer. She wasn’t thinking of Soloman-Schmitt, or of the new private office she had been awarded, or of power and wealth, or of Paula Treadwell, or of the Duke of Valentine, or of princes, or of edicts and orders. Fortune had a new meaning for Venus. It had become a woman. One who should have been kissed. One who might have desired to be kissed. Or one who might have let herself be overcome and then kissed. Very likely now it was a lost fortune. She thought this afternoon: What didn’t you do, fool, that you might have, or in hindsight, that you should have?

Fixed in Their Ways

“Queenie?”

“Da–Edward.”

“Have supper with your daddy?”

Lydia was trying to break him of this queenie/daddy thing. She was too old for it. But it was an old habit and so far she hadn’t succeeded. “Daddy, what time?”

“After work. Listen, I’ve got the deeds to the summer place.”

They were a pair. Him obsessed with dying, converting his assets, giving them away, just in case. Her obsessed with growing old, hoarding her assets, counting her grays when no one was looking, lamenting her very skeleton. “Bring them.”

“Bring your better half.”

Almost eighty years old and still flirting with the skirts. “I’ll try,” she said, “if you promise to behave.”

“Leave her home then. See you at the club, Queenie.”

“Mine or yours?”

“Mine, of course. I never get used to yours. The lean menu and all.”

“Five o’clock, Edward. I can’t get away any sooner.”

“Okay, Queenie. Five it is.” (click)

The summer place, the family’s lake house, was boarded up, its gardens overgrown. No one had used the place in years so it made good sense for her father to want to unload it. Buildings don’t hold up well to that kind of neglect.

Lydia was planning on renovating it, a future present to Helaine, and she had no real intention of bringing her to dinner where the sometimes forgetful Edward Beaumont might leak the secret and spoil the surprise. That left her between a rock and a hard place for the moment.

“I can’t, Lana. I told my father I’d meet him for dinner after work.”

“Lydia? I’ll join you then. I’m sure he won’t mi–”

“Helaine–NO.”

There was silence. Had she hung up on her? “Helaine?”

“But we always dine on Thursdays.”

Thursdays. It was Thursday. “Oh, gosh, I’m–” But she just couldn’t risk it. “Lana, I–”

“Don’t you Lana me, Lydia Beaumont. I’m not a fool.”

“Helaine, please. It’s my father.” She had screwed up again. Something small, but it was the second time this week. There was static on the other end of the line. “I won’t be long. I promise.”

“Oh, fine. Isn’t that a lovely consolation? This is not a small thing, I’ll have you know. I’m…I don’t even know what…upset.”

Helaine rarely got upset. “I’ll see you tonight, Helaine.”

No response.

“Helaine?”

“Lydia.”

“I love you.”

“You lo–hang up the phone! You’re a cad and I’m…I’m just livid.”

“I know. I’m sor–”

(CLICK)

_____

Venus hung up the phone. Another irritating conversation with her mother. Another you-made-your-bed-now-sleep-in-it bullshit lecture.

She had called to complain that Sebastion was never around. There was nothing particularly unusual about Sebastion not being around, but today Venus had had it with work, with Soloman-Schmitt bullshit, with her new, quiet, desolate, out of sight, out of mind, hermetically sealed office digs on the fifteenth floor, where she was now three whole floors from VP Beaumont and certainly falling, if not in reality then definitely in spirits, and tumbling, tumbling, tumbling steadily toward the moon if fascist Paula Treadwell could have her way, and probably she was getting her way because the woman who should have been kissed and wasn’t, wasn’t, WASN’T, was gone again, gone as ordered, no doubt, kissing Paula’s ass, doing Paula’s bidding like the royal coward she really was, like a, like a, like a rook or a bishop or even a petty pawn on Paula’s chessboard, or like a despicable creature, too, a spineless and despicable creature hiding its frightened, despicable, spineless, lily-white ass in a fancy shell somewhere, or like the slick presidential wanna-be she was destined to be, thinking only of her pristine bureaucratic self, her princely future, her corporate reputation, posturing to become king of the shitheap, the most-likely-to that everyone was talking about these days, at the water cooler, at the club, everyone constantly jabbering about Lydia Beaumont, the goody-goody do-good girl, daddy’s little girl, daddy–and she probably still calls him daddy–being the first to train her for a brilliant career in ass kissing, and now work life consisted only of work, of tidbits of news, the rampant rumors and speculations that said soon the woman would be kissing the board’s ass, too, instead of just Paula’s, corporate gossip that could still be heard on the fifteenth desert island floor where she had been marooned for fifty-eight days, count them: fifty-eight MISERABLE days without sustenance, without so much as a fucking phone call, without receiving a single message, without a single message returned, not at the office, not at home, not on her cell, not even an e-mail, and here she was having to leave town again for Overseas Operations, wanting to call the woman, but her highness was just so aloof and above it all, the simplest things so beneath her, didn’t even have a cell phone, and soon there would be a plane to board, soon, too soon, flying into the sunset without saying goodbye, yet another month passing like the others before it, and how many more to come after that, who knows, and this time toiling thousands of miles away and not being missed at all, not being kissed, and the whole wide world was beginning to feel like a boundless desert island and she couldn’t help but wish she had never, NEVER come to work for Soloman-Schmitt and especially never, never, NEVER for that piece of shit, heartless, high and mighty Lydia Beaumont, and she missed her highness terribly, missed the vanishing on-again, off-again, the ever so handsome and distinguished Valentine Duchess–there she said it, at least in her mind–and once, just once, it would have been so nice to have come home to Sebastion, to find him chilling at home, waiting for her with his smooth smile and his hot hands, to have had dinner all laid out for her instead of the microwave whatever crap she was forced to content herself with in his absence, or it could have been totally rad to have seen some tall summer drinks with paper umbrellas sitting out on the patio, ready to be sipped from colorful crazy straws, old jazz booming from the stereo, silk ropes, toy cuffs, early bed. She could have tolerated anything tonight, put up with anything at all, but the goddamned empty penthouse.

The conversation with her mother had only added to her despair.

_____

“Beaumont, why don’t you have a cell phone?”

“I hate them.”

“Get a beeper then.”

“Paula, I’ve got to meet my father. What’s wrong now?”

“Angelo’s leaving for Tokyo in a few days. She’ll be gone a month.”

Another Treadwell trap? “And…?”

“She’s in a slump or something. Call her and wish her a nice trip.”

Oh, just the usual meddling and manipulation. Paula’s trademark. “I thought I was incommunicado?”

“This is an exception. Besides, you’re in the home stretch now. Cheer her for me. Give her a call. Or better yet, send her an e-mail. No, don’t send her an e-mail. Pay her a visit. Say hi, say bye.”

Hi, bye. Lydia brushed her hair back nervously. “Okay. I can do that.” A few weeks ago she had discreetly popped her head in at VP Kendle’s looking for Venus and saw that her things were gone. Her office phone and e-mail had been changed, too. Searching the corporation’s directory was of no use. Her new location either wasn’t listed yet or Paula had seen to it that it wouldn’t be. Lydia hadn’t dared ask around lest word of her quest got back to Paula, or to the board, or to whoever else had a vested interest in such matters. Of course, she could have called Venus on her private cell phone or e-mailed her at home, but… “Where exactly is Venus Angelo these days?” she asked.

“Oh, that’s right. I put her on the fifteenth floor. Your old office.”

This detail struck Lydia as intrinsically perverse though she didn’t comment on it. She wanted to ask if that seemed wise in light of Paula’s romantic suspicions and whether or not Venus was aware of the fact, but there wasn’t enough time to listen to Paula’s hemming and hawing, her predictable and impenetrable techniques for avoidance.