More Lipstick Chronicles

by Emily Carmichael

  Carole stared at her.

  “It’s like men,” Elyssa continued, warming to her topic. “If a man makes it clear that he’s interested in something long-term, that he’s available and that he’s all yours, you lose interest. Which reminds me, I saw you and Mitch in the Lifestyles section of the Washingtonian. You were going into a party to promote forest fires.”

  “It wasn’t to promote forest fires,” Carole said. “It was to raise money for a scholarship program for western state firefighters.”

  Elyssa waved a manicured hand.

  “Whatever. The Washingtonian declared you a fashion ‘do.’ But you shouldn’t wear a dress twice if you’re going to be photographed. You wore that thing to the fund-raiser for that guy from Minnesota. Don’t be mad. I’m just trying to be helpful. By the way, are you two going to end up at the altar?”

  “What?!”

  “Judging by your expression, this is the first you’ve heard of it. The caption read ‘There are bells a ringing.’ And you’ve just proved my point. Mitch is available, he’s interested in something long-term and . . .”

  “We haven’t talked about marriage,” Carole said, when what she meant was “Mitch talks about marriage but I change the subject.”

  “Aren’t you glad that freedom of the press means freedom of the press to get it wrong?”

  “What else did the Washingtonian say?”

  “It had an article about the Senate debate on the trade bill. In a different section, of course. Could you tell Mitch that I am all for a global economy but that trade agreement will do more to hurt . . .”

  “Okay, okay, I have to run,” Carole said, and as she opened Elyssa’s office door, Robyn stuck her head in.

  “Mr. Avers is here to see you,” she said.

  Elyssa whistled.

  “The president of Private Bank?”

  “Himself,” Carole said.

  “That’s impressive. I would have thought he’d just send a flunky.”

  “There are a few of those, too,” Robyn said. “I stuck them in the conference room. You want the champagne in twenty minutes, right?”

  “Yes,” Elyssa said. “Twenty minutes. I’ll stop in for a glass. Carole, you can’t stop a company from making a decision you wouldn’t necessarily make. It’s their decision, not yours. And just remember, you work for Allheart. This contract is going to bring us a lot of money. And if these upgrade proposals are any indication, we could use it.”

  She splayed her hand across the stack of proposals for technical upgrades to the Allheart systems. The customers were coming—Allheart.com was gaining market share since one of its competitors had gone belly-up—but to service the customers the company needed better, faster, flashier product. The dot-com marketplace was changing rapidly. Company presidents weren’t using their calculators to figure out how rich they were. The new calculation on the street was total capitalization divided by daily burn rate, a ratio that revealed the exact date a troubled company would go out of business. Luckily, that wasn’t what Elyssa did with her TI- 187—so long as Carole did her job.

  “Okay, I’ll shut up,” Carole conceded. “Just let me work through a couple of details with them. T-minus twenty minutes on celebrating.”

  Elyssa gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Carole?” Robyn said when Carole was halfway down the hall.

  Carole turned.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t wear that dress again.”

  Carole looked down at the nubby tweed pencil skirt that she had paired up with a featherweight pink chiffon blouse. The matching full-length tweed coat was just now hanging on the back of her desk chair.

  “No, no, this is fine. I’m talking about the one in the Skyline. It’s a great dress, but we’ve already seen it. I look at that section of the paper to see what the stars are wearing and it’s boring to see the same thing twice.”

  “I’m not a star, Robyn. I wear what’s in my closet.”

  “Maybe you need some kind of clothing allowance for being his girlfriend.”

  “You mean, from the government?”

  Robyn bit her upper lip. And for one terrible moment, Carole thought she might seriously be considering the notion.

  “That’s a great idea,” Robyn said with just the right amount of sarcasm. “It wouldn’t be any crazier than some of the government programs I hear about. You might talk to Mitch about it.”

  “I’ll have him sponsor a bill.”

  As she entered the conference room, John Avers jumped to his feet, nearly upending his chair. He was thinner than the pictures in BusinessWeek and Forbes suggested and the same article had suggested he was possessed of a certain feline impatience that could have been coke, neurosis or a double-shot espresso venti. He had brought with him three suits—sales wizard Sam Kinnear, an outside counsel, and an assistant. Sam had been in on the negotiations from the initial phone call from Private Bank to the last-minute details pencilled into the contract yesterday afternoon.

  “Carole, a pleasure, finally meeting,” John said. They shook hands and the other men nodded their hellos. Then John reached behind his briefcase, open on the conference table, and presented her with an abundant bouquet of white roses wrapped in key lime-colored tissue paper. “I can’t send a greeting card to thank you for bringing our companies together. Although some of the stuff Sam’s been showing me looks great. You do good work. Thanks for bringing this deal to us.”

  “Thank you, John, they’re lovely,” Carole said. “But it isn’t me who brought us together. It was Sam who made the initial contact.”

  Sam Kinnear shrugged. “I got a brain wave after reading the article about you in the Washington Post,” he said.

  “You mean the one about cookie recipes?”

  He nodded sheepishly. “Yours was the best recipe.”

  “All those cookie recipes must have raised a lot of money,” John said. He rubbed his hands together. “Good cause, good cause. Now, shall we?”

  Robyn had slipped into the office to give her three green folders. She took the flowers and Carole said she should make it ten minutes.

  “Now, gentlemen, let’s turn to page three,” she said, sitting down.

  The men took their places. John took one folder and flipped it open to the first page of the Allheart.com contract. He pulled out his pen and initialed the margin of the first page.

  “We probably should discuss the reinsurance provision,” Carole cautioned. “Sam had some concerns about this yesterday.”

  John shook his head. He had finished initialing each page of the contract and was poised to put his signature on the final page.

  “I don’t have a problem with it,” he said.

  “But Sam said the term was unacceptable to your company.”

  “We’ve talked it over,” Sam said. “We’re okay with it.”

  Carole had been prepared to make concessions, although of course not without a little tussle. At least for show. Now she had the distinct impression she could have asked for John’s firstborn and it would be fine. She believed in her product, but Allheart.com was not that valuable to a banking concern. She watched John riffling through the second folder, jotting his initials on every page’s margins. The table vibrated—his kneecap banging incessantly against the underside of its surface. John Avers was living proof of that study about fidgeters losing weight much better than calm people—but who’d want to be vibrating like John just to maintain a size 6?

  “Must be difficult,” he said. “So many demands. Time. Money. No rest in Washington. Need to get away occasionally. Good-looking couple. Camelot all over again. Last gentleman on the floor of the Senate. Wife’d like to meet you and Mitch.”

  She had trouble following his train of thought, but she felt an uncomfortable shiver as he slapped the second folder shut and issued his invitation.

  “This weekend. Our jet will pick you up. Cayman Islands. Little place; we own the island. Our friends from Washington come out. Mitch’ll know everyone. Tr
eat our people well.”

  “Um, are you inviting Mitch and me for the weekend?”

  “Absolutely. Last gentleman of the Senate. That’s what he’s called. Only member of Congress who is liked by both parties. And these days.” He glanced at his suits who made the proper Ain’t Washington Awful? clucks. “Glad to have him come down. Got a future, he does.”

  “I don’t mix my business with his.”

  The knee stopped moving. The table stopped vibrating. John’s eyes were lizardlike, unblinking and cold.

  “In Washington, Ms. Titus, everyone mixes their business.”

  “I’m from New York,” Carole said.

  Sam coughed.

  “Carole, all John’s doing is inviting you and Mitch to his home in the Cayman Islands for the weekend. It’s a social invitation. Nothing more. And in the middle of January everyone welcomes a little sunshine. December was rough.”

  “Yes, but . . .” And then she understood. “Sam, when you made my cookies, weren’t you surprised about the ingredients?”

  “Uh ...”

  “Most people don’t put potato chips in their cookie dough, do they?” Carole asked. “And yet, it’s the salt and the starch in the potato chips that really give the cookies their texture. Don’t you think?”

  “Uh ...”

  “So you read the lifestyle section every week?”

  “Uh ...”

  “You’ve never made cookies in your life, have you, Sam?”

  His face turned red.

  “Actually, no, but I did read the article that went with it.”

  “And that’s when you got the bright idea of bringing our two companies together.”

  Five seconds of dead air.

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “That’s it. I read the article. And then decided that, uh, Allheart looked really good for us.”

  “Lightbulb,” John said, the knee bouncing against the bottom of the table. “Like a lightbulb.”

  She rolled her chair back on its caster balls and punched Mitch’s number on the speakerphone.

  “What now?” John asked.

  “Inviting. Mitch. Cayman,” she said.

  Two rings and she had Mabel on the line. Mabel pretended she didn’t know who Carole was, but Mabel always did that. Mabel had worked for the Evans family for years and when Mitch brought her out to Washington so she could spend more time with her grandchildren living in Baltimore, Carole wondered if Mitch’s mom had warned her to keep Mitch away from wicked older women who weren’t good at politics.

  Except what she was about to do was phenomenal politics.

  And terrible business.

  “And your last name again?”

  “Mabel. Get him. On the phone. Now,” Carole said, annoyed at herself for talking like John Avers. She just hoped his body tics weren’t contagious. “Mabel, it’s important.”

  A silence, either of being put on hold, or else one of Mabel’s own dead silences.

  “Hey, honey, what’s up?” Mitch’s voice crackled.

  “Do you know Private Bank?”

  “Yeah. I do. But why?”

  “I have the president of the company in my office.”

  “Hello, Senator,” John said.

  “Uh, hello,” Mitch said. “Carole, why don’t you take me off the speaker? I’m having a little trouble hearing you two.”

  She picked up the receiver.

  “Carole, what’s going on?”

  “He wants to invite us to the Cayman Islands, darling. He’ll send his jet to pick us up.”

  “Absolutely not. That company is in front of my committee fighting legislation that would cut into their onshore business.”

  “I thought so, honey.”

  “They have been trying to get face time with me ever since I got sworn in and frankly, I don’t want even want to meet the guy in the elevator. That guy wants to buy me.”

  “I know, sweetie. I know.”

  “Carole, he’s listening to you, isn’t he?”

  “Of course.”

  “Get him out of your office. He’s using you to get to me.”

  “I just figured that out.”

  “Oh, and Carole, one last thing.”

  “What?”

  “Are you wearing underwear?”

  Carole giggled.

  “I’ll see you tonight.”

  She hung up the phone. Pushed her chair back to the table, picked up the green folders and ripped one in half just as John howled. Then she ripped up the other one while he sputtered at Sam.

  “What the hell?” he screamed, as she finished off the last one.

  Sam opened his mouth and closed it as if he were an alarmed fish. His assistant stood up and then crawled under the table to retrieve the pieces of the folder.

  “Did you just call me a bitch? Out!” Carole said. She rose up on her heels, standing toe to toe with John. “Out of this office.”

  “I’ll call you a helluva lot worse than bitch! We’re talking about a major contract that’s going to give you . . .” Funny how he could only string a sentence together when he was furious.

  “Out.”

  She felt Sam’s assistant crawling around on the floor at her feet, trying to put together the pages of the contracts.

  “All I’m asking . . .”

  “Out.”

  “. . . is a simple favor. A meeting. With the senator. And I’m willing to pay big time for it.”

  “Get out.”

  The door of the conference room opened.

  “Let’s celebrate!” Elyssa exclaimed, holding up a bottle of Taittinger’s finest. Robyn edged around from behind her with a tray of Marie Antoinette champagne glasses. They both stared.

  “Out,” Carole said.

  “You know what I can’t stand?” John demanded. “A sonofabitch who won’t play by the rules.”

  “Funny thing. I can’t either.”

  For one instant they understood each other. As enemies. John looked as if he might hit her, smash the table, pull out his hair, spit on the floor—a hundred ways to express his rage were possible. And then he simply shook his head, as if to rue her stupidity. His only violence was to shoulder Robyn aside as he left the room. Sam picked up his suitcase and, bobbing his head with an ill-conceived apology, trotted after his boss, the lawyer hot on his heels. The assistant who had gathered up the last pieces of the contracts now understood he had been abandoned. He threw down the pieces and ran after his tribe. They left behind an umbrella and plenty of hard feelings.

  “What the hell was that all about?” Elyssa asked, eyes huge.

  Chapter 2

  The black sedan with the senatorial license plates was parked in front of Mitch’s town house on a narrow street in the Georgetown neighborhood of the District. Carole pulled up right behind the car and waved to the driver. He replied with a friendly tip of his fur-trimmed hat.

  “Evenin’, Miss Titus.” When he spoke, pale tufts of steam danced around his face.

  “Good evening, Sam. And it’s Carole.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  “So why the Miss?”

  “Because that way, I get to keep calling Mitch Mr. Senator. And that makes me laugh every time I say it. Imagine—that’s the boy I taught how to ride, how to groom, how to birth a foal. Just yesterday, he was growing so fast his shirtsleeves couldn’t reach his wrists. And now—yes, sir, Mr. Senator. Very majestic, don’t you think?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Hey! Did you see my picture in the Post today?”

  Sam kept an album of newspaper photographs under his seat. They were all of Mitch, and most of them featured Sam somewhere in the background. The sixty-something ranch hand was certainly enjoying his time in Washington.

  “Show it to me later,” Carole said.

  “Surely.”

  There were no photographers, no reporters, no weird protesters or groupies on the sidewalk. Like every other member of Congress, Mitch faxed his daily schedule to the papers (actually it
was Todd, his chief of staff, who did the faxing). Since Mitch and Carole were going to the gala opening of the Smithsonian election history exhibit, a stakeout of his home was not necessary. Even the press liked a little downtime after a long day.

  Carole let herself in with her key. The two-story foyer was papered with butter-yellow silk and tiled in white marble. The staircase led to a second story apartment, which Mitch kept for visiting family and friends. Mitch’s mom used to send suitable young ladies who needed a place to stay until they found appropriate living arrangements. The guest apartment had been idle for some time. But not because Mrs. Evans, Sr., had stopped trying.

  Carole dumped her briefcase beside the stack of mail on the mahogany console. A dry-cleaner bag hung on a coat-rack containing a pale pink silk sheath, ready for wear. It was a beautiful dress that Mitch himself had purchased for her in New York and she had planned to wear it—not for the first time—tonight. But she had taken Robyn’s little criticism to heart and had picked up another dress, a three-hundred-dollar extravagance she didn’t need, especially after such a horrible day. She and Elyssa had spent a good hour behind Elyssa’s closed office door after the Private Bank execs made their retreat.

  “We lost a good contract!” Elyssa had wailed.

  “It was never ours to begin with,” Carole pointed out. “It was about Mitch. They couldn’t get to him any other way.”

  “How often is this going to happen?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Okay, okay, I’m sorry,” Elyssa said. “It’s just . . . I wanted that contract. Come on, we’ve got to stop thinking about it.”

  “We can’t stop. It’s all my fault. I knew something was wrong with the way Private Bank was coming on to us, but I couldn’t figure it out. Oh, God, I hate this.”

  “Don’t obsess.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “I have an idea of a way to distract us.”

  “It won’t work.”