“Oh, Sweet Jesus! Not that kind of shine? You don’t think — ”
“I’m not saying anything about anyone,” Lucinda replied. It was one of those times to keep her mouth shut. It was only that when she entered Frank’s office the first week of classes, Margo was leaning over Frank’s desk right next to him. Her right hand lay on his left arm and she held an object Lucinda couldn’t see in her left hand. Which is nothing really, except Frank pulled away quickly when Lucinda said, “Not interrupting, am I?”
“Martin had lunch last week with an old buddy who worked at the Chamber of Commerce when Frank was there,” Tori said. “Since he knows that we’re donors to P-H, he told Martin that he heard Frank had a sexual harassment suit against him when he was at the Chamber. It got dropped mysteriously. Or probably not so mysteriously.” She lifted her hand to rub her thumb against the tips of her fingers.
“Oh, really?” Lucinda said. “I’d have imagined the Executive Committee would have thoroughly vetted him for that.”
“I suppose like anywhere else it depends on who’s doing the vetting?” Tori suggested. “Anyway, I almost forgot to mention! I wrote up a care program for your mare, ran it by Dr. Camille. Let’s see.” Tori plunged her hands into a succession of pockets. “Here it is!”
Tori plucked a folded feed company envelope out of her shirt pocket and handed it to Lucinda, who read over the plan written in ink on the back.
“Four to six months off, equine companionship, increasing richness of food slowly. Trim feet, new front shoes. Peace and quiet,” Lucinda read. “Sounds like a good routine for me too.”
“I don’t think you’re getting any six months off.”
“‘Fraid not. I’ll take the new shoes though.”
Their eyes met over the envelope. Lucinda looked away suddenly to stop tears from spilling down her face.
“Shit,” Lucinda said. She swiped at her cheeks with a crumpled tissue from her pocket.
“Cinda, I’m really sorry about Bart. Really. You two should be together.”
“God, Tori. I’m so ashamed of what happened.”
“He needs to know that. That you need him. That’s the important thing. Tell him!”
“Tori, I have to do this my way.”
“But he’s throwing away — ”
“He’s not ready.”
“Martin’s going to talk to him.”
“Tori!”
“It was his idea, I swear. I can’t stop him.”
“I give up!” Lucinda said. “Once you all discuss this up, down, and sideways, let me know whether my husband is coming back or I’m to be stoned in the square.”
“Hey, easy!”
“It’s just that everyone is making it their business, and it’s just between Bart and me.”
“I’m afraid,” Tori said, “it’s not. Jay was a bit of a braggart right before he skipped back to Europe.”
Their eyes met again. This time Lucinda didn’t look away.
“Triple shit. I thought I’d embarrassed myself enough.”
“It’ll blow over. But keep your skin thick a bit longer.”
“As if I could live one day in my job with thin skin,” Lucinda said. “Change subject.” Even talking about Bart made her flush with guilt. She felt heat over her heart like a rash. “What’s up with that little horse you have now? Nanogirl?”
“You’ll love this! Thea says Nanogirl dunks her hay in big cups of Gatorade that the riders leave outside their stalls. She gets this gleam in her eye like she’s invented some new taste sensation and then chews her moistened hay slowly like a fine diner.”
They peered into the arena as Camille Augustine, DVM, entered, followed by Thea leading Pogo, Tori’s favorite jumper. Dr. Augustine was the first nonwhite, nonmale equine vet Thornbury had seen. Dr. Camille, as she was affectionately known, was slightly built but deceptively strong, as one must be whose patients generally weigh more than half a ton. Before Ramsey, head of the stable workers, could shut the gate, Nanogirl trotted in and evaded all attempts to corral her into a corner.
Lucinda laughed. “There’s your therapy horse!”
There was yelling down below from the wash stall area.
“Sounds like Margo. I’ll go protect the troops.”
“I’ll come with you,” Lucinda said. “Although I’m sure Ramsey can protect himself.”
Margo was standing in the wash stall, balled fists to her slender waist. Her breeches and shirtsleeve wet along her left side.
“Why don’t you control her!” she yelled at Ramsey. “I could have broken something!”
Tori and Lucinda approached the wash stall. Ramsey did not answer, but made eye contact with Margo. His serene smile revealed large uneven teeth, and he ran his fingers through his long yellowed white hair with curls the width of quarters at the ends.
“What happened here? Ramsey?” Tori said.
“That little horse. Ms. Flushing tripped over her,” Ramsey said.
“She tripped me! Why isn’t she in some kind of stall? Or pen?” Margo asked Tori.
“Or pocket,” offered Lucinda.
“She follows Dr. C.,” Ramsey said. He chuckled. “No one can stop her.”
Margo glared at Ramsey. Ramsey smiled back at her.
“Margo, I’ll take care of it. Thanks, Ramsey,” Tori said. She went out to the indoor with a carrot and captured Nanogirl.
“We’ve got to find this young lady a job,” Tori said to Lucinda when she came back in.
“Don’t look at me,” Lucinda said. “I got more than I can handle as it is.”
Broken Wings
Martin Bentley drove his mud-splashed Lexus too fast heading into the final curve before the road jagged right toward the sea beyond the two-lane overpass bridge. He’d just been to his lawyer’s office a mile from Peter’s sublet apartment. When Martin had left, the lawyer was not optimistic about the future of Hyperion Estates.
In the dimming evening light, Martin saw a teenager, one of a group of four, toss something brown over the guardrail onto the embankment. Martin hit the brakes hard to slow down before the bridge. Hearing the screeching brakes, the kids spun around toward the oncoming Lexus, then piled into a beat-up Honda Civic, whose original red paint job was now a strange faded purple, and sped away. Curious, Martin stopped his car on the gravel shoulder of the road, got out, and peered down over the embankment.
He could not believe what he saw beneath the blooming goldenrod. Without thinking, he wrapped his suit jacket around the broken bird and placed it gingerly on the backseat.
* * * * *
“Together we can make great strides in biotech research while giving our students the inside knowledge track they need to get the edge,” Frank said. “And the contacts to get ahead.”
If he got this sponsorship from Fargill Tech, funding the initial phase of the science and tech building expansion would be his first big coup. It looked like a slam dunk.
“Intriguing, Frank, but is everyone behind you?” Roger Fargill said. He smiled so rapidly it looked to Frank like a lip limbering exercise. “It would be far easier for us to go with a school that has a setup for this kind of work instead of reinventing the wheel. Or the computer, I should say.”
A few members of the project team chuckled. Someone farted. Everyone laughed louder and scanned faces across the table to see who looked the guiltiest. No one confessed.
“Great question,” Frank said. “One of the thrusts of Peabody’s Strategic Plan is to stay cutting-edge relevant. To do that, we need partnerships with the best firms in the most promising fields. That’s what I… we… intend to create through multiyear research partnerships. Tied with the international students program, we’re going to be attracting the best on the globe. In fact we’re getting a new Board member from Mumbai.”
“Yes, Frank. But do you have everyone behind you?” Roger repeated.
“Absolutely,” Frank said. Well, I will, he thought. Soon.
Frank scrutinized the f
aces presiding over the wreckage of coffee mugs, half-filled water bottles, smartphones, tablets, crumpled napkins, and doodles on notepads on the conference table. Eyes were still on him after an hour and a half. He had them. They were his. He didn’t give PowerPoint presentations. He wanted eyes on him. He didn’t want to be standing in the dark.
“I think that gives us everything we need. Final decision will come at next month’s meeting,” Roger said. “All right crew, back to it!”
While Roger and Frank convened in a private corner, the project team began stretching, talking, jabbing phones, and heading back to their offices to direct the folks in the cubicles.
“It’ll certainly fly. Great stuff, Frank.” Roger scanned the room that emptied quickly, leaving the two of them alone. Then he turned his back to the door and lowered his voice.
“I wanted to see what you could do about my nephew Kevin. Hell of a baseball player,” Roger said, laying a warm palm on the top of Frank’s left shoulder. “He’ll be applying to Peabody, and, although his academic record is fine, I was wondering whether you could… help things along? He’s not the best standardized test taker.”
“I don’t see any problem with that,” Frank said, still buzzing from the presentation.
“Perfect. Well, then. I’ll be in close touch. Ah! Be sure to update the final numbers based on those tweaks we discussed today.”
“Of course, I’ll e-mail them over the weekend. You’ve built a great team.”
“The best.” He looked at the wall clock. “Ah, I’m off. Client from Singapore in town.”
“Me too. Full docket. Let’s catch up next week after you review the numbers,” Frank said.
Roger slipped Frank a business card, which he shoved into his suit jacket pocket. They shook hands, and Roger walked Frank back through to the lobby.
Frank rang Margo once he got out of the parking garage and left a message.
“Let’s catch up at my house tonight. Won’t be available till nine. My office gets cold at night anyway. Don’t know how those damn Thornboughs put up with it!”
He headed north on the main artery out of the city and flipped on the windshield wipers as the rain hit and slid down the glass in opaque sheets. These autumn rains were miserable, he’d rather have snow if it were going to be this cold, but he didn’t care today. It was starting to come together. He was going to wake up this sleepy campus and make something of it. Cliff was right — this was just the challenge for him. Something that was him, that wasn’t related to insurance in Connecticut — his father and brother’s thing. Not that either of them ever helped him along the way. Except to warn him that his crazy ideas of mixing entrepreneurs with educators were going a bit too far. As if that were helpful. They hadn’t seen nothing yet.
He just had to be sure to pull everyone along and throw them appropriate bones when needed. Margo was lapping up the attention. Honor he could put off with plans and promises and only slight untruths. Being a lawyer, she expected worse. Lucinda, she was obstacle number one. She looked too much like Polly, his ex. Tall, with those inscrutable indigo, almost amethyst eyes, and nearly black hair. Same self-righteousness too. With Polly, he could always pull the Sean card — she never went against him about their son. Like the news about that silly harassment charge brought against him by Deena Cunningham. Polly knew she needed to back him up to the press at least until Sean got out of the house. But things weren’t the same with Sean anymore — he’d taken Polly’s side. Frank regretted that. But nothing was written in stone.
He turned his mind back to Lucinda. She’s the one to work on, he thought, as the traffic mysteriously clogged for a half a mile and then dispersed for no apparent reason. Lucinda’s courage was swelling. Speaking up. Talking back. He wouldn’t have thought her capable of it in their first work meeting last spring — still in her thirties, that eagerness to please he’d noticed fundraisers adopt. As a survival tool? As a weapon? he wondered. He would have to nip her rebellions before they grew legs. But something told him it wasn’t going to be so easy, not as easy as managing the others.
He should have fired the whole lot when he came on board. Cliff, under pressure from incoming Board Chair Honor Fullerton, had extracted a promise from him to give it time before he overhauled development. “Our fundraising staff is a well-oiled machine soliciting scads of loyal donors like clockwork. Don’t fix what ain’t broke,” Cliff argued. Frank agreed, reluctantly.
But Frank thought Lucinda should just stick to the direct mail and the phonathons and making nice to people at parties. Handling the details while he steered them to new, bigger money. She was supposed to make him look good. He had the contacts that really mattered. Alumni wouldn’t be the ones to pull P-H to the heights he aimed for. It wasn’t good to have a few isolated individuals making megagifts based on quirky whims and then trying to pull the strings. You needed a consortium of business partners you could lead to get anything accomplished.
Frank missed the Route 8 turnoff, lost in the pinball game of his thoughts. He decided to take the next exit. He’d spend the evening in Newcester, unwind with a quick walk on Fisherman’s Harbor Beach if the rain stopped, eat at The Captain’s Table in that corner booth they always gave him so he could work. He’d order Coquille St. Jacques although it wasn’t on the menu. Tweak Fargill’s numbers. Make calls — Tara Whitcomb (so many new hires), Honor Emerson (she was calling every other day now… ), Hal Denton, the financial consultant he’d just engaged.
At nine-ten, he parked in his driveway graded with clamshell fragments. Walking from the car to the back of the gray stone mansion, he caught Margo, a second before she saw him, leaning against the door under the outside light at the back entranceway, as they had arranged. The light from the eves burnished her hair to a brilliant rusty burgundy.
He’d asked her to park in the main administration lot and loop around Rantoul before slipping behind Thornbough Hall and along the cliff walk, with its botanical name plates in front of acid-bright berry bushes oblivious to salt spray and withering wind. Margo’s curls had been tossed about by the wind, and as she smoothed and fluffed them he wondered what they would feel like along the bare skin of his chest. Those tiny curls like wave bubbles sinking into sand. He shook his head, remembering himself. She reports to me, careful.
Margo straightened at his approach, smiling, but not too enthusiastically. As if, he thought, she were trying not to look too eager. He unlocked the door and let them in.
Although he had cleaning and cooking staff, they all fled by 9 pm, or 6 pm if he was eating out that night. His phone blared the first three rapid notes of Beacons of Knowledge before he got to it.
“Yes, come over,” Frank said. “See you.” He turned the ring tone volume down. “Warren will be by in a few,” he said to Margo.
After they entered the foyer, he reached into his pocket for the keys, pulled out the business card, and glanced at it. On the back was written Kevin D. Fargill. He handed it to Margo.
“See that you give this boy all due consideration when you see his application next year,” Frank said, throwing the car keys on a marble table holding a jade vase of goldenrod and Queen Anne’s lace. He glowered at the blooms. “I don’t understand why they present me with weeds.”
“Well, put in your order, Mr. President. If you want anything fancy, you’ll have to pay. Remember, old New England college money is not for hothouse flowers and caviar. To them, wildflowers are just as attractive.”
Frank shrugged out of his coat while Margo, frowning slightly, tucked the business card out of sight in her wallet. She removed her outer coat, revealing a femininely cut hunter green business suit. All traces of frown were removed from her face before she returned her gaze to Frank.
“What do we have to cover tonight?’ he said. “Oh. I need to talk to Warren first. He should be over any minute. Let’s go to the Pecan Room.”
Frank locked the back entrance door and they walked to the front room to the left of the grand front entryway
. It was done in French provincial, the cream of the furniture of Ethan Thornbough, IV — the last occupant before the deteriorating mansion was donated to the college. The pecan wood furniture wasn’t to Frank’s taste, especially the end tables with curvy legs, he thought they looked like wooden octopuses, but he couldn’t redecorate, as he did in his office, without rustling the feathers of too many of the ancient monieds whom he needed on his side.
A deep bell sounded and echoed in the back of the mansion.
“Help yourself to a drink. I’m just going to talk to Warren for a few, then send him on his way.”
Frank walked to the back entrance and saw Warren standing under the outdoor light. He gave Frank a thumbs up. Frank smiled. So damn young and enthusiastic. Just what I need.
Frank let him in.
“I can’t stay long, but I got news I wanted to tell you in person,” Warren said.
“Hello. Come in,” Frank said, steering Warren away from the Pecan Room to the library. He didn’t want to mix Margo and Warren tonight. Warren left a pungent wake of bay rum cologne mixed with some astringent note Frank couldn’t identify.
They stood, each leaning against one side of the large-stone fireplace, in this room in which Ethan the Fourth stashed the family’s collection of Japanese art, ceramics, and an antique screen with two cranes on it. Frank often felt like he was about to break something in this room and preferred the Pecan Room, as much as he hated curvy furniture. Frank switched on the gas, igniting the insta-fire. Grinning, Warren picked up a poker and feigned a fencing thrust toward the doorway.
“Well, I got the first of them!” he said, placing the poker back in the fireplace tool stand. “A new donor at a hundred grand. And I’m pretty sure for this one that’s just a pebble thrown in to test the water.”
“Excellent,” Frank said.
“We’ve batted around numbers,” Warren said. “But we agreed I’m to get a grand for each of these? Right?”
“Yes. I’m setting up system with Hal Denton,” Frank said.
“Good, I’ll need it. You’re looking at an engaged man,” Warren said. His hair was shorter now but still wet looking, Frank noticed. “As of yesterday.”
Halt at X: A North of Boston Novel Page 6
