Ride a Cockhorse (10 page)

Before the day was out, the entire staff had arrived at the obvious, if flawed, conclusion that Mrs. Fitzgibbons had known about her promotion all the while; that was why she had become so outspoken and assertive in recent days and would certainly have explained why she had come to work looking like a million dollars this morning. Who could argue with the logic in that? Madeleine LeClair, one of the tellers, predicted in a whisper that Mr. Frye was certain to resign, as no one, she said, could endure such a painful comedown; however, Pauline Smith, the elderly lady working the next window, disagreed in dismal tones, asking where a man of his age would be able to go. Later in the day, Mrs. Fitzgibbons called Connie McElligot into her office and sailed into her. She gave Connie a solid piece of her mind. Mr. Zabac had gone home for the day, so Mrs. Fitzgibbons felt no need to keep her voice down. On the contrary, dozens of people could hear her scolding of Connie through the open door.

Mrs. McElligot remained motionless throughout the tirade, looking stupefied in her chair. A red band of color traversed her forehead. She was at heart a bully, and like many of her kind was herself rather easily hectored. To Mrs. Fitzgibbons, the exercise was wonderfully cathartic; it crowned a day of triumph. Her mind jumped from subject to subject.

“Another thing. Three weeks ago, you were in here selling raffle tickets for the Blessed Sacrament's women's solidarity movement. Last summer,” she said, “you were recruiting people for a church choir. I wouldn't be surprised to see you come huffing and puffing in here, pushing your big church organ in front of you!”

Connie was long known at the bank as a woman who couldn't open her mouth without boasting about her music and her position as organist at the Blessed Sacrament Church; she was oddly hypnotized by this line of attack, therefore, and looked upon the woman pacing methodically before her, with her creamy face and beautifully mascaraed eyes, as though Mrs. Fitzgibbons were the devil on earth.

“The nuns and priests of this world can stoke their own boilers,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons.

She would have said more, but Julie entered, carrying a basket of flowers with an enclosed note from Bruce. The word of her advancement was spreading. At this same time, Mrs. Fitzgibbons got a congratulatory call on the in-house line from Howard Brouillette, the vice president whose responsibility was to reduce the bank's loan risk by selling mortgages into the secondary market. Mr. Brouillette worked by himself at the opposite side of the bank, in a little cubbyhole office behind Mrs. Wilson's auto loan section; and on the strength of his rumpled, bespectacled appearance and his wizardry with technicals, was characterized by many of his coworkers as something of a geek. While Mrs. Fitzgibbons might have acknowledged the importance of other officers, like Neil Hooton, who was treasurer of the bank, or Mrs. Wilson, Howard Brouillette was
infra dig
. “I can't speak to you now,” she said to him.

“You must be on cloud nine,” Howard persisted in a gushing voice, but Mrs. Fitzgibbons hung up.

For the final hour, her office was a beehive of activity. After sending Connie back to work, she telephoned the local newspaper and told Sherman Resnic, who occupied the city desk and was a friend of hers from childhood, of her promotion at the bank. While on the phone, she sent Julie across the floor to the tellers' windows, to tell Jack Greaney to put his jacket on and to keep it on. At one point, she actually had three different employees in her office at the same time (as it happened, not a single one of them responsible to her) and was giving out suggestions that amounted to orders from on high, as from Mr. Zabac himself. One of these was the bank guard, Alec Donachie, who was kindly disposed toward Mrs. Fitzgibbons, anyhow, and appeared to enjoy everything about her these days, not the least of which was the way she had suddenly replaced her own boss and was now generating some excitement in the place. A dark, meaty blush came to Mr. Donachie's cheeks when Mrs. Fitzgibbons told him to go out and get himself a new uniform, something more “eye-catching,” as she put it.

“Go to the uniform store in the mall. I don't want you looking like that.” She frowned and waved a pretty hand at his faded gray jacket, his near-creaseless twill trousers, and the rather ugly sight of the tips of a pair of lumpy brown Oxford shoes. “I want you noticeable, but not as a duffel bag.”

“You've got some right ideas, Mrs. Fitzgibbons.”

“You look like you lost a war. The person who put you into those things should be shot dead.”

“He is dead,” said Mr. Donachie. “They belonged to old Bobby Bresnahan, remember?”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons couldn't conceal her liking for the stout, balding guard and flashed an agreeable smile at the way he fell in naturally with her high-handed remarks. He clearly welcomed her treating him with a steely affection that was both imperious and reassuring.

“Find something in black,” she said. “They used to have a black uniform in the window that had a very smart cut to it. I want you in it. That's what I want. That and a black-visored cap, white shirt, black shoes polished like glass.”

“Could I wear a little American flag pin in my lapel?” he was eager to know.

“Go back to your post now, but don't get lost out there. I have an important assignment for you this afternoon. If you show a little snap in the days to come—some style, Alec—I'll get you a raise.”

“No fooling,” he said, impressed.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons returned to her desk and sat down. She was having a wonderful time, and, what was better, saw no conceivable end to it.

“You could do that?” he said.

“Go back to work.” She didn't look up, but reached for her pen and appointment calendar.

At the door, Mr. Donachie turned back. He had straightened his cap and pulled ceremoniously on his lapels but appeared perplexed.

“What, exactly, is the nature,” he inquired, “of the important assignment for this afternoon?”

“You'll be called when the time comes.” She looked at him with a blank face that both challenged and dismissed his curiosity.

Interestingly, in the next thirty minutes, Mrs. Fitzgibbons forgot all about it herself. At about ten minutes after three, with the doors locked, as the bank staff settled down to complete their end-of-day computations and paperwork, Mrs. Fitzgibbons departed her office for the day. As she strode across the gleaming marble space adjacent to the tellers' windows, her path intersected with that of the security guard and the head teller. Jack Greaney and Mr. Donachie had just emerged from the ornate glass door that led into the tellers' work space, and between them were the two De Maria brothers. The two brothers wore dolorous expressions, their oval balding heads shining with an olive hue, their lips compressed. Jack Greaney was leading the way and was plainly uncomfortable at being forced to carry out the task of firing and expelling two of his men, while Mr. Donachie brought up the rear.

“Why us?” said Laurence De Maria, the stouter and more effusive of the two. He was staring with hatred at Mrs. Fitzgibbons, as she came striding past them. “What'd we do? Kill somebody? ... What am I, an embezzler?”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons showed a look of disgust at the indecorousness of the man's remarks and went on elegantly before them toward the door.

“Thinks she's a bigshot,” said Morris De Maria, the younger of the two, whose eyes were reddened and inflamed with tears.

“Who told you you could run a bank?” Laurence De Maria called after her viciously.

“Thinks she's a Rockefeller,” said the other.

“Well, she's not!” Laurence was furious. His dark eyes bulged ominously. “You can't run a bank!” he shouted.

Worse luck, Mrs. Fitzgibbons had to stop at the rear door and wait till Alec Donachie came forward and unlocked it. The De Marias were right at her elbow. Laurence was fit to be tied. His swarthy cheeks glowed purple. He continued to lash away at Mrs. Fitzgibbons while leering at her. Mrs. Fitzgibbons, who was significantly taller than the De Marias, waited with a pinched, arrogant expression and stared at the door while Mr. Donachie fished out his key. Not long ago, she had looked on the De Maria brothers as a playful, likable pair, a couple of chatty practical jokers who leavened the formal atmosphere of the bank on quiet days with their harmless high jinks. As the guard inserted the key in the door, Jack Greaney stood to one side, clasping and unclasping his hands; he was wearing his suit jacket now; a sickly smile twisted his lips; he was mortified by his role in the events.

“Why don't you shoot us?” Laurence shouted at her.

“She can't fire people.”

“We want our severance pay, lady. I'm not kidding you.”

Mr. Donachie held out his arm in such a way as to obstruct the brothers from preceding Mrs. Fitzgibbons out the door. Alec's deference was not lost on Mrs. Fitzgibbons; she nodded fractionally as she stepped past him. “Throw them out,” she said.

Hearing that, the De Marias came scampering after her in the vestibule that led to the street. The newsdealer in the lobby stared up at the sight of the two gnomish brothers chasing the elegant woman.

“
Throw them out!
” One of them mimicked her in a high-pitched voice. “You'll be hearing from us!”

“We've got rights.”

“Look at her, with her fancy-ass way of walking all of a sudden. A fancy ass!
Throw them out?
”

A scattering of yellowed poplar leaves blew past with a scratching sound on the red-brick pavement of the open-air quadrangle. The granite fountain twinkled in the sun. Mrs. Fitzgibbons walked with her head in the air.

“Thinks she's in the movies.”

“We've got benefits coming, lady.”

As Mrs. Fitzgibbons lengthened the distance between them, Laurence loosed an obscene parting shot. “She's got her snatch out for everything that moves.”

He followed her partway up the ramp to the garage. “Big-shot lousy cunt! We want our severance pay!”

For a day or so, Mrs. Fitzgibbons concentrated her attention on some of the more superficial aspects of her new job, such as sending Julie to the stationery store to order new letterhead and giving her signed approval to mortgage loans that Leonard Frye had already endorsed. Her only business decision came on Thursday afternoon in response to Felix Hohenberger's description of a garden apartments project on Lower Westfield Road which he wanted the bank to fund, but the soundness of which Mr. Frye had questioned.

“Do it, Felix,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “I like it.”

“Zellan and Downey are pretty good businessmen,” he explained, prepared to repeat at length the arguments he had earlier expounded to Mrs. Fitzgibbons's conservative predecessor. Mrs. Fitzgibbons was having her afternoon coffee, which Julie had brought to her on a pretty black-and-red-lacquered tray, and the last thing she wanted to hear was Felix Hohenberger enlarging for twenty minutes on the character and creditworthiness of his borrowers. She dismissed him with a wave of her teacup, in a manner Felix was not used to. “I want it, Felix. Write it for me,” she said.

The backs of Felix's ears glowed like two tomato slices as he went out the door, a reaction that Mrs. Fitzgibbons was quick to notice. Her officers did not seem to understand, evidently, that their tenure was a day-to-day proposition. Mrs. Fitzgibbons sent Julie into the mall then to get her some stockings at Fogel's, a mother-of-pearl compact she had admired at Stearn's Jewelers, and some herbal teas at the specialty food store, and, while the girl was gone, returned a call from Sherman Resnic at the newspaper. Sherman had heard more about the “Parish Bank shakeup,” as he called it, and asked Mrs. Fitzgibbons to comment on the extent of the changes. He wanted to write it, he said.

“Send a reporter,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons replied.

“I was too busy to talk yesterday but was happy to hear the good news. I'll give you a nice spread, Frankie.”

“I'm glad. Send a photographer with him.”

“That's automatic. What time?”

“Eleven,” she answered. She could picture Sherman sitting at his desk at the
Ireland Parish Telegram
, and remembered him from childhood as a polite, studious, wet-lipped young lecher who followed women in the street and was actually arrested for it once in the lobby of the Victory Theatre. Sherman was known for his off-color puns, one of which he retailed at this moment.

“I'd like to come myself,” he said.

“Please,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons cut him off, “I haven't got time for this.”

On Friday morning, before the newsmen arrived, Mrs. Fitzgibbons sent Julie upstairs with a written request that would empower her to enforce a dress code on the entire staff of the bank. Julie returned right away, saying that Mr. Zabac had not come in yet. Later, Mrs. Fitzgibbons sent her to the second floor again, this time bearing two requests. The second typewritten note asked the chairman to grant Mrs. Fitzgibbons authority over staff personnel in the vague but important area of bank-customer relations—that is, the code of conduct which bank employees were expected to observe in dealing with depositors and loan applicants. With such seemingly innocuous powers in hand, Mrs. Fitzgibbons felt confident that she could quietly extend her authority across departmental lines, and thus undercut the authority of certain important officers, such as Neil Hooton and Mrs. Elizabeth Wilson, whom she now regarded as her adversaries. When Julie came back downstairs with the requests in hand and stated that Mr. Zabac would not be coming to work today, Mrs. Fitzgibbons was greeting the men from the newspaper.

If, until now, the brilliant transformation in Mrs. Fitzgibbons's attire and grooming had been such as to attract the notice and admiration of others, those efforts were nothing compared to the results on parade this morning. She was wearing a very costly Emanuel Ungaro wrap dress that Bruce had helped her select the previous evening. It was poison green, and gave Mrs. Fitzgibbons a slender, luminous appearance that even she might have thought impossible. (In his salon that morning, Bruce went into raptures at the sight of her; he actually set his hands flat to his face when she peeled off her coat and sat down to be worked on.)