by Ric Klass
“And what exactly is that, Chip, Sir?”
Unsure if he’s detected a hint of irony, “A perfectly respectable man with a bit of time on his hands. I’m off to get a book I ordered.
“I’m happy to fetch it for you or take you in the Bentley.”
“Frederick, there are some things a man must do for himself.”
“Don’t forget your lip balm, Sir,” his professional organizer tells his employer as he hands him a Vicks tube.
“Thank you, Frederick.”
Although he’s not gotten to the financial section of the Times yet, he decides to toddle over to the nearby pharmacy to get a cold inhaler. Can’t be too cautious with this change of climate, he thinks. What with buying the occasional can of lime-scented shaving cream, picking up his shirts from the Chinese laundry on the East Side – he’s not sure if he can trust the West Side to do an adequate job – and finding just the right cheese for lunch from Dean & DeLuca, he wonders how other single men find the time to spend all day at a desk on Wall Street.
Nowadays Chip has an additional task. Finding ways to keep Frederick busy. Lately The Chipster has a bit too much free time after letting his household manager do some of his pressing errands. It’s only correct for both of them to keep Frederick occupied doing something or another.
Flavored lip defender and inhaler firmly in his pocket, Chip wanders uptown toward his favorite café at Barnes & Noble at 82nd and Broadway. On the way he discovers a discarded Siegel’s Potato Chip bag – six-and-half-ounce size, sour cream and onion variety, he notes – right in the middle of the wide sidewalk. He feels humiliated that his namesake company has contributed to the visual blight in his neighborhood, albeit inadvertently to be sure. He removes one of the blue plastic Times wrappers he carries with him in his pocket just in case of such an emergency – lest he soil his hands – and, holding his nose, deposits the offending sack in a blackened metal trashcan. I wonder why they can’t keep our waste containers cleaner and more attractive? the public-spirited man asks himself and resolves to write a letter to the editor of a newspaper. He’ll seek Frederick’s opinion later about which publication would be most suitable. A missal to a local journal would help to solve the pressing problem in my own little corner of the world. Yes.
He stops his journey and stands still at Eightieth and Broadway to consider his proper course of duty. But perhaps that would be selfish of me. Lately he’s noticed other litter scattered in his path and thinks quite rightly that it’s a bigger problem than just Columbus Circle’s. Maybe I should write to a national paper, or the International Herald Tribune?
Satisfied that he’s done more than enough work for the morning, he enters the bookstore where he happens on the latest issue of American Angler magazine. Have got to try the sport someday, he thinks. And now up the stairs to the café on the mid-mezzanine level. He orders a simple coffee, thank you very much – he’s not one of those doppio dopes who lay out extra good money for some fancy who-knows-what. The Chipster remains thrifty, and proud of it, despite the trusts from his parents and, of course, Aunt Lizzie’s kind gesture. I’m not a tightwad, and fifty million may seem like a lot of money to some, I suppose. But it doesn’t hurt to save for a rainy day I always say.
As he takes a communal seat by the window, he tilts up his contemplative head from his magazine and spies an auburn-haired beauty directly across from him. She’s reading The New Yorker. Chuckling at some witty cartoon, he surmises. Probably educated. Why can’t I meet a girl like that?
“Pardon me, Miss. Would you mind passing the salt?” he forays.
“For your coffee?”
What a dolt I am! he reacts. “It improves the taste by bounds. You should try it sometime,” the Chipster replies as he lightly sprinkles a dash of sodium chloride into his joe. “No kidding.”
Karen Bladner manages to keep from laughing at him. I’ve heard some lines in my time, but this takes the cake.
An obnoxious odor breezes into Chip’s nose. A sweaty, unshaven man in grimy work clothes sits down behind the well-dressed and poised young lady he’s taken an interest in. Karen sniffs, her eyes cast suspicious daggers at Chip, and the long-legged nymph takes a seat at another table.
Bloody hell, the Chipster rages internally. We Siegels won’t take this unjust calumny lying down, and jumps up. Understandably incensed, he strides over to Karen, “It wasn’t me,” he says, pointing to the pungent perpetrator. “You see, Miss, it. . . .”
She tentatively inhales in his direction. “OK. It’s not you. But you think I’m cute, don’t you?”
“Well. . . .”
“Of course you do. Why else would you follow me to tell me you don’t smell? I get it. You want to meet me. Please sit down,” she says. She’s a bit lonely herself. With her night work and overtime duty for Pirot, she never gets to meet men her age as Karen Bladner.
“I didn’t mean to intrude. I. . . . ”
“Have a seat. I’m getting a stiff neck looking up at you.” He seems harmless enough, sort of cute, and not badly dressed, she thinks.
Already smitten, young Siegel plops down. “I’m Chip. You were laughing before. A cartoon?” he asks.
“No. An amusing piece about strippers in New York.”
Siegel’s no prude. “Well, a girl has to eat, doesn’t she?” he says understandingly.
“Yes, she does,” and likes her table companion even more. If she ever sees him again, maybe at some point she could tell him about her night work.
“Very pretty bag you have. Saw one like it in the Sunday Times Magazine.”
He’s winning some big points with me. I hope he’s not gay, she thinks. “Are you?” she says out loud.
“Am I what?” he asks. “Did I spill some coffee on myself ?”
“Are you gay?”
“What?” he says and stands up.
“No man has ever complimented me on my bag before.”
“Just because I read the complete Sunday Times cover-to-cover including the Styles section doesn’t mean I don’t prefer women. I chased you to this table. Remember?” Chipster’s enamored of this woman but won’t lightly be taken for playing on the opposite team.
“Sorry. Please sit down. It’s just that well-dressed, handsome men often are.”
“Well, then. I see. A natural mistake,” and sits again. Chip’s not immune to flattery.
Then he considers taking a big chance with her. He might as well find out her attitude now about dating a jobless man. He fantasizes the conversation. I’ll say, “Not everyone’s as fortunate as I am. I spend my days like this. Having coffee, reading the paper, going to an exhibit at the Whitney, playing a round of squash at the club. Pretty dull, huh?” Then she’ll say, “Not in the slightest. It’s to your credit if you enjoy it. I’d love to have a happy man of leisure at home waiting for me at the end of the day.” She interrupts the happy fantasy. . . .
“What do you do?” Karen instantly regrets her commonly asked question. She doesn’t want him to make the same inquiry.
“I’m a witness.” He doesn’t want this one to get away like Laura did. Chip rented the movie Witness for the Prosecution last night and it’s the first thing that pops into his panic-stricken mind.
“You’re a what?”
His mind whirls around, “You know what I mean,” angling for time.
“Not really.”
“Well. During a trial they call expert witnesses to help the jury decide who’s the right fellow to get the award and so on. I’m one. An expert.”
“An expert on what?”
He hesitates answering for a moment. The Chipster regrets not reading the entire article in the Financial Times this morning. He tries to recall the story, headline news about some Brit cell phone company buying a near-bankrupt one in Bangladesh or some other blasted third-world country, but he can’t get his mind around it. “Telecom,” he finally replies simply. “Yes, telecom. Very big, you know. Very, very big. They’re always going broke with all those
wires, antennae, and other such thingamajigs. Highly technical. Mostly night work. That’s why I’m free just this moment. I won’t bore you by delving deep into it.” But he does dig himself deeper into it.
“Wow. I’m a third-year law student, so that’s really interesting to me. I don’t want to go into litigation, but. . . .”
Indignant at the very thought, “Of course not. A nice girl like you.”
She gapes quizzically at him, “I mean I don’t want to practice litigation . . . as an attorney.”
“Right you are. I’m with you now.” She must think me a complete birdbrain, he shudders.
“But even corporate lawyers need to know evidence and torts.”
“What would evidence be without a tasty tort? I always say,” and emits a little chortle. What the dickens is a tort? Chip wonders.
Pretty stale law school gag, she thinks. “What are you working on now?” she inquires, noticing his magazine.
He peers down at American Angler. He’s forgotten all about it. He sees a large pink fish on the cover. “A little research. Seems the Alaskan salmon chew their tiny, sharp little teeth into TV cables. They cut them clean in half. Can’t get a good signal anymore in Fairbanks. Salmon have become a major telecom issue. And yet we need to protect the poor critters, don’t we? A conundrum. They want my opinion. Confidential. Please don’t tell anyone about it, Miss, . . . ”
“Karen. Karen Bladner. I won’t. Lawyers have to maintain confidences,” she smiles. He’s the first person she’s told her real name to this summer in New York except her landlord. The Kit Kat Club and Pirot pay her in cash.
“Pleased to meet you, Karen. That is, if you don’t mind my calling you by your first name. It’s seems to me that one of the troubles in this world. . . . ” but his coffee confederate interrupts his speculations on the pernicious freewheeling use of familiar names between perfect strangers.
“Not at all. Please do.”
“So. If I’m not being too nosy, Karen, what’s a brilliant young woman like you doing between school terms? Interning, I suppose, at some prestigious law firm in the city, no doubt.”
“Yes. It’s an evening job, too. Researching financial predators.” And that’s exactly what the Wall Street crowd I titillate nightly should be called, she thinks.
When they part an hour later, she demurs at giving him her phone number but takes his. “I’ll call you,” she says. “Or perhaps we’ll run into each other again,” Karen tells the disappointed man.
“Perhaps,” he replies downcast. Once again it seems to him that his good luck in accumulating wealth doesn’t extend to women. Drat. Probably won’t call, he pouts. They never do. She thinks I’m a telecom expert. I could have at least come up with something adventurous – war correspondent, or dog breeder maybe.
Awhile after Karen Bladner leaves the bookstore, the soon-to-be Carrie Blade wonders why he didn’t tell her his real occupation. That expert witness lie’s the silliest fabrication I’ve ever heard. We all have our secrets, I suppose. Kind of a mysterious guy. Interesting. I’ll call him soon, she decides as she leaps on the number-one subway headed downtown to the Kit Kat Club just before the doors slam shut.
“Which One Talks
About Our Fees?”
Chung Fat, the new quant man recently transplanted from the sixty-eighth floor of the Goldman Sachs office in Hong Kong, wants to know. When he arrived back from the Davison funeral, Davian Corbeille called for a 7 PM, all-hands-on-deck emergency meeting at the Broad Street headquarters.
“The fourteen business principles upon which the foundation of our firm rests has nothing to do with fees, young man,” Davian calmly rebukes. “For example, take our first one, ‘Our clients’ interests always come first.’”
“That principle ends with, ‘Our experience shows that if we serve our clients well, our own success will follow,’” reminds grey-templed Mason Rextal, a suave veteran banker with his eyes never off the table’s chips.
Davian’s cut on the fees and the resulting year-end bonus will pay for the little island and château off St. Tropez that his wife’s been nagging him to buy. The maybe twenty million dollars at stake here for his wallet amounts to nearly a year’s pay – not peanuts even for him. “Malcolm, what’s Charlotte Davison’s personal cash flow estimate?”
“With daddy dead, and combined with her trust funds, something like two hundred and twenty five big ones a year,” responds the Oxford-trained financial analyst.
“Big ones?”
“I mean million not billion,” forgetting this is a Goldman Sachs meeting.
“Debt?” asks Davian.
“Maybe five hundred.”
“Million?”
“No. Just dollars. She likes to pay in cash.”
Davian’s nonplussed, “You mean this dame owns a coin-op worth two billion smackers and she owes five hundred bucks?” his Bronx origins shining through under the unusual stress.
“Yes, Sir. And that’s just an average of her monthly credit card bill. It could be less.” Breaking stringent company rules, Malcolm Bennett begins to sweat. He sees the logic of the question. Pursuing this implied strategy can’t succeed.
“Who was that Alaskan bear talking to her at the funeral, Bhadra?” Davian asks the thirty-two-year-old woman from New Delhi in charge of personal backgrounds for this transaction. Not all deals warrant this kind of coverage, but Davian’s nothing if not a detail man.
“B. L. Blackmun, Distinguished Professor of Classics at Columbia University. A friend it seems of G.F. Davison, judging from the photos we have of them together. Always gesturing toward buildings and statues near the park.”
“Why would anyone do that? Perhaps demented. Get a full background on him. When we leave, we all must do a full court press on this case. What about Charlotte herself? Any peculiar habits, friends?”
“Likes to party. Big-time athlete – a karate black belt who regularly wins competitions. Divorce attorney, as you know. And plenty good at it, judging from her clients’ awards. All women. She won’t hesitate to go to court – and she wins every time,” Bhadra tags on.
“That’s just great. A monstrously rich, kung-fu, tightwad, litigating ball-buster stands in the way of this merger,” Davian moans.
“And pretty scary, huh, boss?” Malcolm smirks. He surreptitiously peeks at the time on the Bloomberg trading machine. Bad form to be caught at it. The meeting’s diverting, but he’s late for meeting a drinking partner at the Kit Kat Club.
Corbeille’s very displeased at the impudence of the junior associate. “I told you. I wasn’t feeling well at the funeral. An upset stomach or something.” Each member of the cabal sitting around the large circular table scrutinizes the others. They were all there as witnesses. None of the subordinates will say that the worldwide head of structured finance is full of crap – not to his face anyhow.
“There He Is,
Ms. Davison, on the corner,” Charlie’s chauffeur tells her on the appointed Wednesday at lunchtime.
“How are you and how are your grandchildren, Thomas?” Professor Blackmun asks the balding septuagenarian driver as he settles into the black stretch Lincoln limousine. After decades of service, G.F. couldn’t bring himself to let go of Thomas. Not working would kill the loyal employee, though his G. F. Davison Vending Machine Corporation pension had more than ample assets to keep the senior citizen in comfort forever. So G.F. continued to let Thomas drive him, praying to the gods that the two of them wouldn’t get killed or injured due to Thomas’ declining vehicular skills.
“Everybody’s just dandy, Professor. You’re lookin’ mighty fine. Makin’ time with the coeds?” the driver jests.
“You’re making me blush, Sir.”
“The usual place?”
More secrets, Charlie sighs. Everyone knows this man but me. Resigns herself. “Where are we going? I thought I was taking you to lunch. You date your students, Professor Blackmun?”
“Thomas teases me because he knows I’m
a confirmed bachelor, Zoë. Men my age aren’t only unattractive to young women, we’re invisible. See right through us. I can’t imagine a young woman having the slightest interest in me.”
I’m not so sure, considers Charlotte.
“Please, Thomas. Yes, the usual place. I thought we would dine, my dear, where your dad and I used to sup. I hope you’ll enjoy the finest of New York’s haute cuisine.”
“I thought only your daddy called you Zoë, Ms. Davison,” Thomas remarks, obviously intrigued as the limo pulls up in front of 51 Madison Avenue.
Blackmun spots a familiar-looking, tasseled red tarboosh before reaching the destination. “Greetings, Achilles, how’s business?” says Blackmun in Greek.
“You bring me always good luck, professor,” answers a spindly, middle-aged merchant with a thick Balkan intonation. “I knew you would come soon. This week fortune shines on me because of your visit.
“What is your pleasure, Madam? As my guest of course,” asks Blackmun as he and Charlie stand in front of a Greek gyro and spanakopita cart. Charlotte allows him to treat though it’s always been her immutable practice to never let a man – except dad of course – pay for her even on a date.
The two walk toward Madison Square Park a short distance away and the professor turns and points upward. “There. This is the best vantage point. Do you see the gorgeous golden pyramidal roof? And the splendid spandrels and gargoyles? It’s the forty-story New York Life Insurance Building designed in 1926 by Cass Gilbert, who also was the architect for the Woolworth Building. Made from Indiana limestone. Gothic-styled with 72 gargoyles and 2,180 windows. The first flag on top was unfurled by a button pressed by President Calvin Coolidge from the White House. After today, my favorite architecture in the city.”
“Why now your favorite?”
“Because it’s the Life Building. And Zoë means “life” in Greek, I’m sure you know.” Blackmun reddens a bit over his explanation. On entering the park, “Over here on this bench. We’ll sit where your father and I liked to converse.”
She takes a bite. “This is a delicious sandwich. I’ll never have a gyro anywhere else and only with you, professor.”