Beauty

by Frederick Dillen

  Everybody looked at the plant with Dave. It was a wet night. They would have to decorate some if they wanted to lease the offices.

  Carol said, “Dave, if anybody would loan on it, what kind of rate would they give us?”

  His turn again. “We maintained the lines,” he said. “They’re ugly but they run. We can find somebody who’d lend. But no, we’re not going to get any sweetheart rates until we prove what the business will do. And until then, we can’t afford to give away any dollars that come in the door. Shit.”

  It was raining again, and the fence gleamed and so did the walls of the plant and the corrugations of the lobster company going back toward town. The rain silvered down through the security lights. Dave thought for no good reason except hope that Carol might now decide she wanted to kiss Easy again, and everybody else could go home.

  Instead, she kicked him, Dave. She said, exactly like he knew she was going to do, “Even an ESOP is not enough, Dave.”

  “What?” he said. “My life savings aren’t enough? You want my kids?” He shoved his chin out, opened his hands in disbelief, and got a laugh from everybody.

  Anna Rose said to him, “It was from my girls I had to put up with that kind of attitude, David. They wanted drama. The boys just sneaked. With the boys, I never knew until the hospital called, or the police.”

  Carol said, no break in focus, “We’ll get a fire-sale price from Baxter Blume, and even so, we’ll need more money than what we can get from ourselves and our employees.”

  Annette would have heard of it, but Dave said to Easy and Anna Rose and Buddy, “Employee stock ownership plan. That’s what we’re talking about with the ESOP.”

  Easy said, “No, Dave. Teesop.”

  Dave said, “E, actually. ESOP.”

  “Teesop. I’m talking a t.”

  Dave pointed a finger at Easy and said, “T for town stock ownership plan. I knew that. Teesops.”

  Buddy said, “Sell stock in this plant to regular people in town?”

  Anna Rose said, “Why not? I live in town, and if I had been running this company, it wouldn’t look like this and nobody would have made that Disney’s World in the woods. Families still have money in this town. Fishing families. Harbor families.”

  Carol said, “Do you think people will want to do it?”

  Dave’s question was, How did Carol learn to drive this bus this well after one day in town, after a lifetime of killing things?

  “Don’t you worry about wanting,” Anna Rose said. “Everybody, and a lot of them wasn’t at the meeting, have been waiting for tonight. Maybe they’re already at my house with money. If they aren’t I will take you to their kitchens and you will tell them.”

  Buddy Taormina said, “Ma. We want to be sure we sell something that works. Take your time, Ma.”

  Dave settled in to watch this play out. He also resolved it was time for a new raincoat.

  Easy said, “It ain’t us selling, Buddy. It’s us buying. It’s Beauty selling to us and to everybody else.”

  So he did call her Beauty. Dave hadn’t believed it.

  Anna Rose said, “Ezekiel Parsons, you sound like cold feet.”

  Easy stared at his feet and said, “Thank you.”

  Carol smiled at Easy when he looked up. Dave saw Easy smile, too. Easy was ready to invest, regardless of the cold feet. Dave watched as Carol kept looking at Easy, and she didn’t let the smile go away, and Easy didn’t let his go away either.

  For Buddy, Carol got serious.

  She said, “Buddy’s got a point. We want to go inside at daylight with somebody who can persuade us that at least the mechanics work. That may not be all Buddy wants to know, but it’s a start. Who was running things here while the head of production was eating off the new plant?”

  “He was there tonight,” Dave said. “Ben Garcia. He’s a kid, but he can run this place with his eyes closed. And he maintained it.”

  “We need him down here first thing in the morning. I need to see it go, and Buddy needs to see it go. And if we can, we also need to dig out some numbers on this plant alone. Annette, can we show people that it was breaking even when it was still running?”

  Carol was asking in public for a projection that would have consequences for her neighbors. Annette was frozen, and Carol said, “Anything you can pull, Annette, the best glimpse you can manage. What about the cursory numbers you ran for the fat boys when they were pretending they wanted to sell it?”

  “Oh, that’s right.” Annette unfroze. “With anything recent, every figure refers to another figure and another figure in a circle, on purpose. Still, yes, like we said.”

  Everybody looked at Annette as if they thought she was going to fall down, but Annette, if you gave her a minute, was always fine. She looked around at everybody and, perfectly solid, said, “Okay, Ms. MacLean. Carol.”

  Buddy said, “Those assholes. Excuse me, Mr. Parks.”

  Dave raised his hands to Buddy, no foul, and guessed that it must be sweet for Carol to come into a town and not be the rat.

  She said, “We’ll use what you find, Annette, and hope it gives us a fair grip on our chances. While we’re at that, we’ll also get ready to sell shares. I’ll find someone to set up the plan. Then, Anna Rose, you and I will go to the kitchens.”

  Carol is driving the bus, Dave thought, and picking up speed.

  To Buddy, Carol said, “We don’t sell a share to anyone until we believe people can get a fair understanding of our chances. There will be risk, no matter what, and we’ll say so. But we’ll know the equipment runs, and we’ll have a good argument for running it. Even in the best scenario, it’s going to be a risk, and not an ordinary risk, so before I ask anybody else, I’ll put in more of my own money than I can afford to lose. I’ll put myself as much as or more at risk than anyone else who comes in.”

  Everyone waited for her to go on, but that was it for now, thank God.

  Dave knew he was going to have to kick in. Maybe it would feel like fun in the morning.

  Carol said, “Let’s all go home. Dave, unless we hear differently, we’ll meet your engineer here at eight thirty.”

  It was too late and too wet for a postmortem, but as people went for their cars, Dave got Carol’s eye and gave her a thumbs-up. One day at a time, and today was the first of a whole hell of a lot of days, God willing, and just the same, it had been a hell of a day. Carol had definitely scored. If Dave was going to make a fool of himself with his money, which he was, at least he’d be doing it for an honest, good cause, which was one feel-good way to lose your money, and he’d be working with a woman who had juice and smarts. All in all, Dave felt good.

  Then there was Easy, standing by the passenger door of his truck, waiting for Carol. Carol was standing still with her fists up under her chin, looking like a child on the first day in a new school, the first minute on the playground. Now Dave, if he were going to be scared, which was what Carol looked (if you could believe that), he’d be scared about everything that had happened today and was going to happen as a result—the business part. In fact, he was scared. What he would never be scared about was going to sit next to someone he wanted to kiss, especially if that someone wanted to kiss him. A theoretical question, not involving wives. Admittedly, kissing Easy Parsons would, for Dave, be a drag.

  He watched Carol watching Easy wait by his truck, Easy watching back. Inside his head and damn near out loud, Dave said, “Oh, come on, Carol. Go. Please. He’s a good person and so are you, and these things don’t happen so much after you turn fourteen.”

  She shook her head at Easy. It looked like a nice shake from where Dave stood, but there it was, a shake, a no, and Easy probably understood that Carol wasn’t a waffler.

  She turned and said to Dave, “I’m going to walk.”

  Fun

  Baxter’s Greenwich phone rang at two thirty in the
morning. He got up, closing the bedroom door behind him so Josie wouldn’t have to listen, and took the call in the upstairs study. It was Carol MacLean, and Baxter’s first assumption was that something catastrophic had happened. Second assumption: she was in another time zone. He remembered she was just up the coast with her fish, and he wondered if Remy had told her.

  He said, “Carol, are they shooting at you?” What Baxter did for a living was still fun, two thirty or not, and truth be told, he could still go longer than the kids.

  She said, “I want some going-away presents.” Apparently Remy had told her. Knowing Carol, however, Baxter believed she would nonetheless bury his fish plant responsibly. He waited to hear what it was she wanted.

  She let him wait. Carol had never called him at home before, and Baxter imagined her sitting on the edge of her latest rent-a-bed.

  He said, “Carol, I wish I hadn’t told you to get lost, and I never should have thrown the Beast thing at you. I should have just told you that you were out.”

  He assumed she would recognize that as twice notable for him. Speaking first, and almost apologizing. He offered this as a way to start the negotiation for whatever it was she wanted.

  She said, “Yep.” A new word for her, one she’d learned from him, if he wasn’t mistaken. Next thing you knew, she’d be coming back at him with “no sweat,” except “no sweat” was forgiving, and he didn’t sense forgiveness was her mind-set at the moment.

  He said, “Blume liked Susannah, and he built you out. I could have argued, but he had something I wanted. You might not think that what I traded you for was what you’re worth, but there it is.”

  He didn’t think she would ask what he’d traded her for. He said, “What I traded you for was free time. I’m stepping back from the new fund, which is what Blume ought to do, and that means assholes get to shoot at what I’m not around to stick up for. Sometimes they shoot for the hell of it. I thought I’d made it clear how good you were, but it wasn’t clear enough.”

  Carol was still silent. Baxter liked her more by the minute, and he’d always liked her. He could never understand why nobody else saw as much in her as he did. He hoped her room was not god-awful. He wondered if it was raining up there.

  He said, “I promised Blume not to tell you until you’d buried the fish, so I tried to get it across without telling you, in so many words, that we didn’t want you, that we were assholes, that obviously we were never going to put you into your own company.”

  And that was just about his limit. Baxter was an absolute never-complain-never-explain man, unless he was dickering with other deal makers, in which case it was anything that worked. At the moment Carol was a deal maker. It was going to be a tiny deal, but Baxter was delighted to be dealing, and in the middle of the night, and dealing with Carol of all people.

  Just to be sure she was on the right page, he said, “But then you patronized me with authoritative comme il faut spleen and left the room like somebody who wanted her company and was ready to take it. That made me realize I hadn’t gotten the message across, so I told Remy what was up and told him to tell you. So screw Blume. Blume got Susannah. He got to push you out of the plane just because I liked you. He got enough of what he wanted, and you’re not going to rip us off just because we didn’t give you the company you wanted and then fired you.”

  “So you participated in the good deed? It wasn’t just Remy?”

  Finally, a voice. “Carol. Admittedly I told him what was up for a number of reasons. But he also knew you weren’t supposed to know. I told him to go ahead and tell you. He’s a serious friend for you, and believe it or not, so am I.”

  “Truth be told, Baxter, you took back the company you promised me, and then you fired me.”

  She was right, but Baxter was saddened to hear Carol say it. He thought of her as a special case, less deserving of untruths. On the other hand, when it was necessary, lying happened. He said, “You aren’t going to rip us off, are you, Carol?”

  She said, “Here it is.”

  “All right. But first tell me you’re not going to rip us off. I’d hate for Blume to be right on that.”

  “No, I’m not. Though the CEO, the CFO, the heads of production and of marketing at the fish, they ripped the Germans off in building the new plant, and the Japanese looked the other way. What I want to do is buy the old plant and run it myself. The bad guys had set up a last game to buy the old plant cheap and get zoning changed for a hotel. You could not have kept the property yourself if the zoning change went through. They would have gotten it, and gotten that hotel money. I killed the zoning change tonight, and they won’t want to buy now. I’ll beat their old offer and anyone else’s offer. Probably nobody else will offer. I think I can make it work. It’s not worth your while to make it work. You do not want it. Send Remy to do the burial on the new plant and the debt. Tell him to make the best deal he can with me.”

  A one-day plunge was nothing he hadn’t done himself, occasionally, once even with his own money. He suspected Carol would be going in, maybe all in, with her own money. If it had been anyone besides Carol, with her skills and drive, he would have been surprised she hadn’t broken out sooner. “You’ve been busy, Carol,” he said.

  When he first met her, she was taking a summer course on field sales management, a continuing-ed thing for grunts put on by the Harvard Business School. Baxter and a couple of biz school guys he’d known in ROTC took the course out of curiosity, which was instantly satisfied, except for Carol, the only woman, there in her three identical suits, taking furious notes and watching the real business school guys as if they were from another planet, which of course they were, among those line salesmen. She introduced herself like it was an act of abject courage. In turn, to prepare for the final exam, he took her and his buddies out along the Charles so she could lecture them on what happened in all the classes they missed. They had fun at that, and after each session, they asked her to dinner, and she ran away as fast as she could to avoid jinxing the fun she already had in the bag. Never occurred to her that, aside from Baxter himself, she was the most interesting person in their little group. And yes, he followed her one evening, because he knew she was staying in a dormitory on the business school side of the river, and yet after the sessions she often headed into the Yard. When she stopped and, in what looked like a ceremony, put her hand on a corner of one of those brick insane-asylum buildings, he crept close enough to hear her say, “I am at Harvard, Dad.” Baxter didn’t laugh about stuff like that. He respected it, and he understood that it would take a while before Carol knew she was more than Harvard. It occurred to Baxter that he would be smart to hire her one day.

  On his phone tonight in Greenwich and on hers in her fish neighborhood, Carol said, “I haven’t unloaded any assets from the new plant, and I think you’ll want to just empty the box, but if I take the old plant, that means you’ve gotten good value out of my time. Remy may be able to sell all the new production hardware as a package. He’ll figure it out. He can get his feet wet.”

  “That’s funny, Carol. Get his feet wet. In the fish business. Is this a going-away present? Am I giving you the old plant?”

  “I’m buying the old plant, and paying fair value, and saving you time and trouble.”

  “Okay. What’s the favor?”

  She went quiet, but now it was her play. He waited for real. He was genuinely curious. He’d always been expecting Carol to surprise, and here she was.

  She said, “I want you to send somebody who will set up a stock plan for us. It would be tough for us to get loans on the old plant, and any loans would be expensive, so I’m going to try and get the employees and the town to pitch in. I think they will. I want you to do this for free and tell yourself that it’s part of the price of getting rid of the plant. Send up one of Patterson’s good numbers and have him put it together and run it through your machinery so we can give it as a turnkey package
for someone up here to manage. It’ll be tiny and a pain in the ass that way, but a big help to us. Also I’d like it if Remy chased the old executive team a little to keep them off my ass. He may even want to chase them for real, but that’s probably not worthwhile.”

  She finished and Baxter was amused and pleased.

  He hoped she felt as good as she ought to.

  That said, it would be unseemly to roll over immediately. He pushed a little. “Why would I do all this, Carol?”

  “Because you can do it so much more quickly and easily and cheaply than I can.”

  “You’re a late bloomer, Carol, but you’re blooming. Congratulations. Now, tell me again why I’d want to do those things.”

  “Because you owe me.”

  “You worked hard. I paid you. In fact, when I brought you on board you never asked for a salary, and I gave you a fair one. You still get a fair one. I’ve had a fair severance drawn up for your welcome home party.”

  She said, “Baxter.”

  She didn’t have to remind him. Baxter never forgot a chit. Though he didn’t mind if one was never called.

  “For fun,” he said. “Remind me.”

  “Aside from the broken promise of a company and getting fired? Okay, two things.”

  “The broken promise and the firing were largely out of my control. And I’m not positive there are other things, Carol.”

  He listened to the silence and hoped she was not deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt. She had to know he enjoyed haggling over a nickel, even if there was no question he would send Remy and put someone on her plan. He would also check it all out himself.

  She said, “First, I tutored you and your two Navy buddies beside the Charles River for several days one summer. Remember that? At the time, you told me you owed me, and I don’t care what you—”

  “I remember. I didn’t need the tutoring any more than I needed the class, but we had a good time, and that counts. What else?” He knew what she meant, and he knew it had been a lousy thing. But it had not come from him. On that count, he was innocent.