Ride a Cockhorse (7 page)

“That would be wonderful,” he replied, flattered. “I'm booked for the afternoon but can give you an appointment any time tomorrow, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, or any day thereafter.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons waved that aside. “I'll be in this afternoon at four o'clock sharp.”

“This afternoon is fine,” Bruce said, reversing himself on the spot without a hint of hesitation. “I can easily make time for you.”

In fact, Bruce was waiting at the door when Mrs. Fitzgibbons, about ten minutes late, came breezing in from the mall and sailed past him and past two of his girls who were tending customers under dryers. Peeling off her coat, she made for the rear. Within a second, Bruce had Mrs. Fitzgibbons's coat and scarf in hand and was seating her with a show of ceremony that concealed nothing of his feelings toward her. He switched off the radio, skipped away, and was back in a flash with a little glass of ruby port. To provide an extra measure of privacy, he opened out a hand-painted silk room divider. A month or two ago, Mrs. Fitzgibbons would have colored to the roots of her hair if anyone had shown her such fawning solicitude; but as she was coming to regard herself as one of the movers and shakers, and recognized also the young fellow's obvious need to associate himself with such a figure, his brisk and obeisant manner reinforced her vanity. She liked Bruce Clayton, but her appreciation of him was a balanced one, tempered by common sense. While he was affable and polite, and doubtless artistic in his ministrations, he was not more than that. (She guessed in passing that Bruce had a very fashionable, authoritarian mother somewhere, who probably telephoned him nightly to listen for a half hour or so to soap opera updates on his love affair with Matthew, dishing back dollops of maternal advice.)

Bruce didn't mince words with Mrs. Fitzgibbons, either, as he surmised from his brief knowledge of the woman that she liked candor. “I don't have to tell you,” he enthused, “that I'm thrilled you want my help.”

“You act it,” she said.

“I'm so transparent!”

“Does that bother you?”

“Being transparent?”

“No,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “Being thrilled.”

“Oh, not in the least! I want you to know. Why shouldn't I?” He adjusted a lamp in order to deflect the light from her eyes. “Having a client like yourself has to be a joy. Say,” he said, “it puts me on the map.”

“Are you always this charming?”

“I'm usually horrible.” He hovered at her side. “Would you like to rest your feet?”

“Please.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons lifted her legs, as Bruce slipped off her shoes. “You realize that I'm going to put through your loan. I hope your friend is agreeable to our putting your property solely in your name. That's the way I want to do it.”

“I already spoke to him about it,” Bruce admitted.

“Was he upset?” Mrs. Fitzgibbons employed a truculent tone that implied the need to be steadfast in such matters.

“I would say that he was more surprised than upset.”

Mrs. Fitzgibbons made herself comfortable. “When Matthew has the money, let Matthew buy his own house. This way, when the two of you have a lovers' quarrel, you'll have the upper hand.”

Turning away, the hairdresser blushed furiously.

“Sentiment has its place in bed,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons added, “not on the dotted line of a home mortgage.”

In short order, Mrs. Fitzgibbons agreed to a complete makeover and rested herself enjoyably as the talented young man busied himself about her. He was talking all the while, remarking on Mrs. Fitzgibbons's skin and complexion, and the strong points of her face. She had classic cheekbones, he said, a smooth, high forehead, prominent eyes, and beautiful lips; her natural beauty was a cosmetician's dream. He rattled off the trade names of a hundred different skin care products, citing various foundations, blushes, moisturizers, and cortisone creams. He worked at close range to her face, his voice an intimate whisper. Mrs. Fitzgibbons was touched by the realization that this attractive man had grown oddly infatuated with her and that the source of his feeling was her forcefulness. Her dark blue eyes followed him as he worked on her with his brushes and pencils. His adoration of her shone in his face. “This is what I do best,” he spoke softly. “You have a face. You have character.”

When Bruce faltered, Mrs. Fitzgibbons helped him. “I do understand.”

Bruce laughed nervously; he shook his head. He was gazing at some microscopic point of interest on her face. “I doubt that.”

She took from his hand the mirror he was about to give her and regarded herself. The effect, in fact, was remarkable. The face in the glass was composed with such artistry, the eyes luminous above the perfect angles of her cheekbones and the seductive golden red coloring of her mouth, she couldn't look away.

“I knew from the moment I laid eyes on you,” he whispered, “I could do my best work with you.”

While inspecting the beautiful mask of her face in the mirror, she reached absently for her empty glass. “Get me some more port.” She spoke pleasantly while continuing to marvel over the transformation.

Bruce was back in a flash with the decanter. “You should look like that every day. I'll darken your hair just a fraction, and that will be perfect.”

The warm sensation coursing through Mrs. Fitzgibbons's veins could not have been explained by the small amount of alcohol she had consumed.

While pouring, Bruce couldn't restrain his excitement. “You have it all, Mrs. Fitzgibbons. Eyes, lips, nose, temples, hair, everything.”

“You'd better not let Matthew hear you.”

“Matthew would be in raptures over you. He knows I'm working on you right now. I told him you were coming. He ... wished me luck.”

His constant pandering to her vanity, in combination with the genuine surge of enthusiasm she felt over her reflection, displaced any feelings of pity that Mrs. Fitzgibbons might have felt for the young man. She handed him the mirror. “You're gifted, Bruce. If you're worried that I won't come back, you can stop worrying.”

“Why don't you come in every morning on your way to work and let me touch you up. I wouldn't charge you a cent.”

“Don't be an ass.”

Bruce stopped what he was doing. “I'm never going to charge you.” He was mortified at the thought of it.

“I will not come to you if I can't pay.” A trace of surliness appeared in her voice. She showed him an adamant eye.

Bruce stood before her in his shirtsleeves, nonplussed, his hazel eyes sparkling. He was sincerely perplexed.

“You're not being fair,” he said.

Mrs. Fitzgibbons recognized the hopelessness of her position.

“Finish me up, then,” she said. “If I can't pay you, I'll take you for cocktails. I'll take you out. I'll take you to Toto's.”

“And you will come in mornings? Before work?”

“I'll come,” she replied, “when the spirit takes me.” She regarded him steadily. She knew that he wished to be handled with affectionate deprecation.

“But you will come regularly,” he persisted in earnest.

For the first time, Mrs. Fitzgibbons gave scope to her waxing egoism. She turned in her chair and stated imperatively, “I am
sitting here
, Bruce!”

The timeliness of Mrs. Fitzgibbons's grooming and rejuvenated looks was evident the very next morning when she came into the bank from Bruce's salon in the mall, her face and hair made up so subtly and artistically that she was scarcely recognized by Julie Marcotte, the receptionist in the home mortgage department, and found on her desk a sealed envelope bearing the imprint of Mr. Louis Zabac himself, the president and chairman of the bank. The typed note inside consisted of a single sentence. It said, “Please come upstairs to me, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, first thing this morning.”

Being optimistic these days, Mrs. Fitzgibbons could only guess that the summons to Louis Zabac's plush second-floor office portended something salutary, as she walked briskly across the plum carpet and climbed the brass-banistered stairway at the back. Her appearance was, in fact, compelling this morning, especially to those who knew her best and were most accustomed to her usual neat, unvarnished look. Her hair was soft and fluffy, and moved about in an attractive way as she walked; her eyes glowed with a dark blue fire that no one had noticed before. On the second floor, Miss Mielke, secretary to the chairman, watched as Mrs. Fitzgibbons darted past her desk, and without even troubling to knock, opened Mr. Zabac's door, and strode right in.

Downstairs, everyone had paused in their early-morning preparations for work to comment on what they had just seen. For the first time in memory, Frankie Fitzgibbons had not offered a single good-morning, or even so much as glanced at anybody, before tearing open the envelope, scanning its contents, then going on a beeline upstairs. Her magnificent appearance, added to the mystery of Mr. Zabac's summons, focused everyone's attention. Felix Hohenberger shook his head ruefully at what he guessed was about to happen to her, for by then Mrs. Fitzgibbons's outspoken behavior had become a talking point in the office. It couldn't go on this way, Felix had said. Others, like Julie the receptionist, felt that Mrs. Fitzgibbons's occasional flashes of egoism were too few and too recent to have caught the attention of the man upstairs. Anyhow, Mrs. Fitzgibbons's glamorous looks were of greater interest to Julie than the implications of her trip to the upper floor.

Connie McElligot, who had never liked Mrs. Fitzgibbons, but now both feared and detested her, could not conceal her bitter point of view. Not long after Mrs. Fitzgibbons vanished up the stairs, Connie nodded knowingly. “Mr. Zabac knows what's going on,” she said.

This remark was undermined to some degree, however, in the next minute, when there came from upstairs the distant muffled sound of a man's laughter, followed instantly by the higher-pitched echo of Mrs. Fitzgibbons's own laughing rejoinder.

Despite his various titles as chairman and president of the institution, Mr. Zabac was effectively the owner of the Parish Bank. Twenty-five years earlier, he had wrested control of the bank away from the Fergus Cameron family, and since then had resisted a score of attractive takeover offers from out-of-town institutions. He liked his present life; coming to work three or four mornings a week, taking pulse of what was going on; convening a meeting from time to time with his chief subordinates; then heading home to indulge his favorite pastime, tending the big flower gardens behind his picture-book house, particularly his rose garden, which had become the glory of his later years.

Physically, Louis Zabac was a very small man. Unknown to most people, Mr. Zabac was the spitting image of his own father, a tiny, knotty-boned little fellow who had come to Ireland Parish, Massachusetts, from Estonia in 1920, and for years worked the streets of the city as a junk dealer. The elder Zabac was the epitome of his trade. An enigmatic man, he spoke with an accent, and was familiar to all, with his horse and wagon, his good-natured haggling and penny-pinching, and, in time, his accumulated wealth in real estate. Louis looked exactly like him, in features and stature. When Louis Zabac stood up behind his massive tulipwood desk and came round to greet his caller, he seemed to increase his height by only a bare inch or two, but his manner was so cordial and impressively self-assured as to dissipate in seconds the shock of his ridiculous appearance. He was a paragon of executive charm.

Sitting opposite him, her legs prettily crossed, Mrs. Fitzgibbons was able to appreciate the diminutive man on a level she had not considered before. Till now, Louis Zabac was a very remote personage, rather like the dictator of some small, far-off country, as he came stepping his way into the bank each morning, his little shoes gleaming like glass, a benign glow to his face. He spoke to no one on the floor, but proceeded upstairs to his office with an air of propriety so complete that he seemed almost an apparition. Had he ever actually stopped and spoken to someone downstairs, that person—and Mrs. Fitzgibbons was no exception—would have been thoroughly discombobulated. It was known, too, that the chairman never lost his temper. He never raised his voice to scold or correct someone. He never got flustered. He dictated his desires in a clear, uncompromising manner, whether in ordering the dismissal of a hapless employee or in ordering an increase in someone's year-end bonus.

The fact that Mr. Zabac opened his interview this morning with a smoothly put pleasantry, remarking cheerfully on Mrs. Fitzgibbons's enchanting appearance, did not, she knew, guarantee happy intentions on his part. The story of Mr. Zabac's having complimented the bank's erstwhile chief financial officer, Mrs. Ida Manning, on her mathematical brilliance just a minute before firing her was legendary in the bank. Mrs. Fitzgibbons's response to his compliment was consistent with her own intention, however.

“You don't suppose I'd come up here looking like a shoeshine girl,” she said.

It was at this point that Mr. Zabac had given out the deep, throaty laugh that registered with those working downstairs, and which was followed immediately by Mrs. Fitzgibbons's own mirthful outburst.

“How on earth you could have fixed yourself up like this in two minutes,” he said, “will remain a mystery to me, Mrs. Fitzgibbons.”

“I don't fix myself up,” she came right back. “Others do that.”

The briskness of her retort fixated the man for a split second. He rubbed his palms together lightly. “I see, I see,” he muttered. He was clearly unprepared for the prepossessing figure before him. To aggravate matters, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, who was never lately at a loss for words, now remained scrupulously silent. She eyed the little man levelly. She didn't move a muscle.

“You and I have not had the opportunity to speak for quite a long while,” he remarked at last, agreeably.

“We've never spoken,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons.