Fortune Is a Woman

by Francine Saint Marie

  Helaine stood up and glanced in the mirror again. There was yet something else that prevented the match, something one can’t fake. Venus was a girl to Lydia. Her only flaw, but it was a major one. She could profess and protest love all she liked–and Helaine was positive she did–but Lydia had a woman and it was that woman she loved, wanted, and needed every night.

  The place was brimming with proof of her. In the furniture she had brought when she said, “I do,” the books that lined the shelves and were stacked in the corners, her paintings and her piano and her perfume, the very scent of the place, the carpets, the flowers, the vases, the stemware, the linens, the hosiery hanging in the shower, the lingerie draped across the chair in the bedroom, the clothes in the closets, the feather pillows and satin sheets, the towels, the plates, the music. She was everywhere. Helaine could see herself everywhere. A fixture in Lydia’s life.

  _____

  “Ooh, mouthwash and…no, let me guess…whiskey. Methinks Scotch perhaps?”

  “Lana–god, let me at that hair,” Lydia said, running her hands through it and stumbling over luggage in the process. “Oh, look at this. My little travel zealot’s all rearing to go. One, two, three…seven. Seven bags and poof, you’re gone, just like that?”

  “I can’t believe how badly you’re handling this.”

  “Yeah, me either–is this for me?” she asked, turning once more to the blond mane. “And this…my consolation prize, Helaine?”

  This was not the right time to confront the drinking problem, Dr. Kristenson reminded herself. It was trouble that had been fomenting for years, part of that despicable corporate culture. She had deceived herself about it, overlooked the warning signs. She was counting on Delilah to be more helpful now that she had called her attention to it. The Scotch, and possibly the mouthwash, too, she attributed to Paula. She would have to speak to her before leaving.

  That was a Band-Aid, the doctor knew, but it would hold till she got back. “Follow me, my love,” she said softly. She was donning the white flag tonight and leaned gently against her wife so she would know it. “Follow me,” she whispered, taking Lydia’s hand.

  “Where?”

  “Bed, of course.”

  _____

  Girls, limes, coconuts, palm trees. Rio Joe lay on the beach frying. His mouth tasted to him like a dead animal and he felt sick, a trifle hung-over from the party last night, the first in what seemed a lifetime.

  He had only intended to stay in the Cayman Islands a day, to break open his stash and run back with it, but the women were so hot and the sun was so warm, he gave himself the weekend.

  Timing was everything, he mused, fishing around for his flip-flops and rolling up his towel. A day or a decade, no matter. He had the goods; he would pick the time. Behind his sunglasses there was a glint in his bloodshot eyes. Revenge, sweet revenge. He could taste that, too. He sneered like his old self again. All the way back to the hotel.

  _____

  “Well, what can you do? Can you make a cup of coffee?” Venus asked facetiously.

  Former VP Kendle’s team of slackers was now VP Angelo’s burden. She had inherited his five remaining assistants and shouldn’t have been shocked to learn that every one of them was a professional putz, the group’s gross productivity a big fat zero. Little wonder she was the only one who had been given a private office. Five big fat zeros. “Can any of you make coffee?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “You think so? You think you can manage me a cup? Well now, I guess I’ve underestimated you. How about you there? Can you make coffee, too? We can open a diner.”

  They hung their heads, a pack of overfed dogs.

  “Out,” she ordered, shutting her door after them.

  Half an hour later, a knock and a sinking suspicion. “Come…?”

  Four cups of coffee for VP Angelo.

  _____

  Everyone had boarded but Dr. Kristenson. Carlos was on standby. He was standing by the door of the jet with his hands on his hips.

  It was time. “Come with me, darling. It’ll be fun,” she said. But it was too late for that.

  _____

  “Heads are going to roll here,” Venus threatened, “and I–where’s the fifth cup, or can’t you all count either?”

  They consulted each other about the fifth cup of coffee.

  “You didn’t put enough water in,” one complained.

  “I didn’t? That’s your job.”

  “You’re fired,” Venus interrupted. “You, too.”

  Down to three. This would be easy. “Is this yours?” she demanded of another. It was lukewarm and too sweet. Weak.

  “I quit,” he answered nonchalantly. He couldn’t work for a Venus Angelo. “I definitely quit.”

  And then there were two.

  “Are we fired, Ms. Angelo?”

  Could she explain five firings? She didn’t think so. Not five in one day. “Nah,” she said, grudgingly. “Not yet anyway.”

  They looked disappointed. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Your work!”

  _____

  Paula was closing up shop for the day when she discovered Chairman Ackerly wandering the empty compound with a brown paper bag.

  “Hey, Joe. Looking for me or Ms. Beaumont? She left hours ago.”

  “You,” he said with a grin. “Here’s the spoils.”

  She took the bag. “Told you he wouldn’t weep.“

  “So you won fair and square. Took me awhile to collect all the bets. What are you going to do with it–illegal, you know?”

  “We’ll put it toward the party fund. Got time for a quickie?”

  “Eeeeaaah-yes. Drink I presume?”

  “Drink, Joe. I’ve changed my wicked ways.”

  “Oh? Terribly sorry to hear that.”

  _____

  “Angelo here. How may I help you?”

  “Ah, Ms. Angelo. You can have dinner with me for starters. I hear it’s your birthday.”

  “It is…who’s this?”

  “Tonight? My place?”

  “Uh…I’m…I might…identify yourself, please.”

  “Too many women, too little time? Or just bad at voices?”

  Some of both. “I don’t think I…do I know you?”

  “You might. Did you like the bracelet?”

  Venus cleared her throat. “Can you hold for a second? I’ve got another call.”

  “I’ll hold.”

  She set the receiver down and left her office. “Who put that call through?” she growled at her two remaining assistants, both busy picking out the crud from a computer keyboard.

  “I did.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is your name, please?”

  “I’m…my name is Billy.”

  “Billy what?”

  “Kendle. Billy Ken–”

  “His son?”

  “Actually his nephew.”

  “I see,” Venus said, looking quite vexed. “You need this job, Kendle?”

  He gave her a sheepish grin, put his hands in his pockets. “Not really,” he admitted.

  “Good, because–”

  “Cool,” he said, taking his coat off the rack and picking up his briefcase. “No problem,” he muttered as he walked out.

  “And you?” Venus quizzed her last assistant. “Do you need this job?”

  “I do,” the young woman answered in a small voice. “Student loans and…and stuff.”

  Loans and stuff Venus could understand. “Fine, you’re hired. Screen all my calls from here on in. Visitors, etceteras. No one gets past you, understand?”

  The girl nodded.

  “What is your name?”

  “Kate Fitz-Simone.”

  “Okay, Kate,” Venus said, amazed that anyone was left standing today. “You’re in charge. Now I’ve got to get rid of this caller and after that you’ll get your instructions.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Venus stopped i
n her tracks. Ma’am is such an ugly word. She was not ready for that title yet. If ever. “Ms. Angelo will do,” she corrected.

  “Yes, Ms. Angelo.”

  Chapter 33

  Great Enterprises and Proof of Prowess

  Either winter had set in before she left and Lydia had failed to notice it or Helaine had taken the fair weather with her, because every day she had been gone was the same, eight days of cold and damp, the gray skies intermittently weeping, the mercury plummeting at midnight promising snow.

  It had brought the exterior work on the lake house to a standstill and Marilyn Beaumont was sorry to have to report to her daughter this week that the porch, which had only needed a few more days of favorable temperatures, would probably languish another season before it was complete. The disappointed crew was moving the operation indoors for now, intent on restoring the battered walls and woodwork, the parquet floors Lydia had completely forgotten about.

  “But everything’s under control, sweetheart. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  Lydia couldn’t get out to the lake house as often as she would like. In her stead, her mom was proving to be an adept project manager, visiting the site at least twice a week to supervise.

  “Keep up the good work, Mom. See you…whenever, I guess. A few weeks maybe.”

  Initially the contractors had reservations about Mrs. Beaumont’s visits. Lay people can be difficult and pesky, hindering more than helping with their unwanted advice and their quirky attentions, often squandering hours of a laborer’s valuable time with nostalgia and drivel. The highly skilled worker is the one who shows up for work with kid gloves and ear plugs, who knows from experience that a cold shoulder can be the most valuable tool in the toolbox for getting the job done.

  To the crew’s relief, Mrs. Beaumont did not require this approach. She was neither a nostalgic eccentric nor a demanding chatterbox. Nor was she undecided, willy-nilly, crooked, or cheap. Whenever she drew one of them aside to chat, she tipped them for their time, whether the consultation amounted to only a few minutes or lasted beyond an hour. She didn’t ask them to cut corners or quibble over receipts, she didn’t pull them off one project to begin yet another or send them in five different directions at once only to later bitch at them that nothing but extras was done by the due date. She didn’t show up in the middle of the day with cookies and tea, preposterously dressed or scantily clad. And if one of them needed to consult with her at her home, she didn’t, as some customers had an annoying penchant for doing, answer her door nude.

  The crew liked Marilyn Beaumont and were enthusiastic about working for her because it was clear to them that she had only two main objectives: that the house be fully restored by her daughter-in-law’s birthday next year–bar no expense–and that the flower beds not be trampled in the process. In short, she was a model customer and the lake house was coming along beautifully because of it.

  Omitting the unfinished wraparound and a paint job, all the exterior work had been completed by the first flurries. The leaky slate roofs looked mint again, their numerous broken or missing shingles replaced with matching slate salvaged from a dilapidated barn the roofing contractor had discovered half a county away; the gutters permanently removed; the damaged soffits and fascia repaired as needed. The collapsed foundation beneath the corner of the building and the rotted posts and beams of the porch were also history. The lake house was once more standing plumb and true. The masons had been required to jack those parts of the building–one inch a week for six weeks–and after that they had installed temporary supports so that the collapsed foundation could be excavated by hand and the fallen fieldstone re-laid. The hand-hewn sills and uprights that had rotted down in some places to the consistency of dust and paste were chopped away in bits and clumps and then hauled off in wheelbarrows to continue their decomposition in Mrs. Beaumont’s old compost heap. They were replaced with brand-new hand hewn ones made of locust, a wood known for its resistance to rot and fungus. The various clapboards, trim boards and gingerbread that had deteriorated from lack of paint and overexposure to the elements had originally been milled of red and white cedar, trees which still grew abundantly on the neighboring landscape. A purist, the master carpenter assigned to this cosmetic work sought to supply the finishing lumber for the project from the same mill he surmised must have furnished the wood over a century ago, an enterprise which still thrived and which was located, as well, halfway across the county. Once the board lengths had been obtained, the carpenter then meticulously carved them at home in his turn-of-the-century wood shop and when the customized pieces were finally installed, they matched the existing ones so perfectly that Marilyn Beaumont was sure when it was all covered with a uniform color no one would ever be able to distinguish the modern master’s work from the old. He had wowed her in the same way replicating the new balusters and the curved balustrade of the porch, the replacement columns, the mahogany tongue-and-groove flooring, the ornate wooden screen doors. Upstairs, off the master bedroom, he had stolen her heart away by miraculously restoring her elegant little balcony to its original glory, having at first horrified and alienated her by stripping it of everything but the cantilevered floor joists. It had been decades since she could stand up there, sheltered from the rain and sun, and stare out at the peaceful lake waters. The only things missing from the reclamation were her children playing below on the bank, swimming, boating, or squabbling, as they often did–or grandchildren. In fact, so reviving was it all to Marilyn Beaumont that she didn’t seem to care anymore about not having grandchildren or even to realize that her husband, too, was out of the rosy picture.

  _____

  The master carpenter was a widower who lived a few towns south of Marilyn in a log cabin he had built for himself after his wife died. In his early sixties, he was a quiet man with a soothing voice and penetrating eyes, wild silver hair he attempted to tame in a ponytail. At first Marilyn had been taken aback by him, his craggy good looks and watchful demeanor, his rugged hands and strong silence. She had thought he must be common to act like this, to be so speechless and to send her sideways glances while he toiled. Several times this past summer she had caught him observing her as she walked in her former gardens and spoke with her roses. Immersed in her pinks and mauves and scarlets, she would suddenly look up toward the house and see him standing there, his hands idle, his amber eyes glinting in the sunlight like a cat’s, like a cat, following her every movement. There was an aim in them she had not seen in decades, a man concentrating on the flower he was thinking of plucking. She had been flabbergasted by those encounters, feeling her heart racing like a girl’s, that healthy fear long forgotten rising inside her, feeling foolish again as, with nervous fingers, she clumsily checked for her wedding ring through her garden gloves and hastily packed up her tools to drive home beside herself.

  Each time he had done this to her she would make up her mind to fire him, return resolute to the lake house the following week, look into his eyes, hear his singsong, “Hello, Mrs. Beaumont,” find another of his miracles waiting for her inspection, go breathless, and change her mind again.

  “Please,” she had finally said, giving in to the inevitable, “call me Marilyn. Mrs. Beaumont sounds too…too formal. Actually,” she added, meeting his gaze, “I rather hate it.”

  “Marilyn,” he said softly. “There’s fish in your lake, Marilyn. See them jumping?”

  She peered out beneath her ring hand. The water was bubbling like a glass of champagne.

  “Shall I bring two poles tomorrow?” he asked.

  She hadn’t fished here in a thousand years. Not since her husband–she dropped her hand. “He’s not dead, you should know.”

  He leaned against the pillar and smiled tolerantly. “Three poles then?”

  She stifled a laugh at that and searched the water, and then the sky, and then the ground. At length she answered him. “I can’t stand to clean the things…the guts and…and all.”

  “Well, that’s all right. Ca
n you cook?” he asked in a bargaining tone.

  Oh, god, could Marilyn Beaumont cook. The man was in for a treat. She studied his eyes to see if he already knew that. They looked inside her. “I can cook,” she murmured, glancing over her shoulder and fumbling in her pocket for her car keys.

  “Tomorrow morning?” he asked.

  Tomorrow was a Saturday. Her thoughts had gone to Lydia then. She wished she knew whether she would be coming out for the weekend. She hadn’t been able to for so long. It was desirable to know first before deciding, but she didn’t want to make him wait for an answer or put herself in the position where she would have to call him later, because she knew she wouldn’t call him later. Shouldn’t.

  “Say nine o’clock?”

  Nine was a respectable hour, she thought. For fishing. If he had said evening, now that would have been different.

  “Or would you prefer later in the evening?” he asked. “Say five?”

  He abandoned the post and perched on the railing, an aged Adonis, Atlas retired, Odysseus returning to bend the bow and claim his Penelope, he flirting, she unraveling, his teasing eyes saying, “Whatcha knitting, honey?”

  “Whichever,” she heard herself respond.

  He heard the quake in her voice. “Nine’ll be perfect, Marilyn. Perfect for fishing.”

  Nine had been perfect for fishing that morning and by noon she had caught four legal trout and he three. She avoided the sight of their massacre and cleaning, sitting it out on the porch swing he had brought for her in his work van, where she listened and kept vigil for a vehicle on the long winding driveway, worried that Lydia might think to surprise her with an unannounced visit. She was not concerned that her husband might show up; he rarely came to see her anymore.