Misfortune

by Nancy Geary

  “A sunk cost, then, isn’t that what you’d call it?” Clio spoke slowly. “An investment in Pro-Chem is out of the question. Period.”

  “I can’t believe this.”

  “Pro-Chem is behind the times. Look at the papers, look at the fashion magazines. People aren’t obsessed with their bodies and diets like they were ten years ago. Pro-Chem’s product is a high-carbohydrate supplement that only professional bodybuilders are interested in. There’s no taste, no flavor, no variety. It’s a mistake.”

  “You’re wrong. Pro-Chem is well managed, small, lean. There’s tremendous growth potential. The deal gives Pratt Capital nearly sixty percent equity.”

  “Oh, please. It’s incredible to me that a company is foolhardy enough to develop health products under the name Pro-Chem. It sounds like a poison, or at least something totally artificial. What’s the crack marketing department thinking? And you’re telling me this company has good management?”

  Miles hated to admit she was right about that. He had urged Pro-Chem’s chief executive officer to change the name several times without success.

  “Besides, what do Mexicans know about healthy living? They can’t even keep their own air and water clean.”

  Miles decided to ignore her ethnic slur. “The company’s headquarters are located in Mexico City for good reason. The manufacturing plant is fifty miles outside the city limits. Labor is cheaper. Pro-Chem can avoid a lot of government scrutiny and keep the FDA off its back, at least while products are in the development phase. It makes perfect sense to be there.” He could feel sweat forming on his forehead and looked about his desktop for a tissue. Too late. The beads of moisture fell onto the papers in front of him.

  “Look, Miles, I’ve said what I have to say on this subject.”

  “I don’t suppose talking to Richard would make any difference?”

  “No, it would not. You’re not the first person today who has tried that tack to get me to change my mind. Richard and I are in complete agreement.”

  “Please, Clio…” Miles softened his tone. “Can I come out to Southampton and meet with you and Richard? I really think that you should reconsider. I’m not trying to railroad you, but I think if I can show you some of the numbers, the business plans, the research I’ve done, you may understand the value in this investment.”

  Clio laughed. “Oh, Miles, you know me well enough by now to know that I never go back on a decision. Not to say we wouldn’t otherwise like to see you any time you feel like a day in the country. Bring Penny, too.”

  Typical of Clio, Miles thought. Make a business nightmare into a social occasion.

  “Now, while I have you on the line,” Clio continued. “I’ll be in the city next Thursday. We need an office meeting. I want to discuss where we are, new ideas, proposals on the table. I want to hire an assistant. You’re what? Senior adviser. This position will be an associate adviser, perhaps. Also I plan to reupholster the conference room chairs and replace the main table. Last, just to let you know, I’m giving Belle a raise, twenty percent. She’s an exceptional secretary, and Richard doesn’t want to lose her.”

  “I don’t need an assistant.”

  “The assistant’s not for you. It’s for me, and Richard. It’s clear that we’re not being kept up-to-date. For example, and this is just one, I’m still waiting for the materials on Bi-Star you promised to send last week. This adviser that I have in mind could do research, follow up on questions I might have. I can’t be coming in and out of the city just to pick up paperwork.”

  “Belle can get that material for you.”

  “In this particular case I’m sure she could. Or you could, as I asked you to.” She paused, seemingly to emphasize her reprimand, then continued. “The point is that Belle can’t do everything. You keep her busy. We keep her busy. What I had in mind is a college graduate, someone looking for some experience before business school. If we offered sixty or seventy thousand, we would be sure to get excellent candidates. Where else can they make that kind of money?”

  With the title associate adviser, Miles thought. A kid with no experience, nothing to contribute but brute labor, gets a substantial salary and a title hardly different from his own. Was Clio grooming a lackey to replace him as insurance against his independence, or did she want to drive him out?

  “Anyway, why don’t you set up a meeting for five o’clock. Ask Belle to order us a light supper. We should be done by eight.”

  Miles resisted the urge to beat the telephone receiver against his desktop. Instead he rubbed his eyes, kneading his fist into his sockets. The pain distracted him momentarily.

  “Miles, are you still there?”

  He did not respond.

  “Miles?…Miles?” He listened to her repeat his name several times until, apparently satisfied that they had been disconnected, she hung up.

  Miles replaced his receiver, sat back down in his chair, and rested his forehead in the palm of his hands. Then he ran his fingers through his thinning hair, pulling out several dark brown strands as he did. He gazed at the loose hairs wound around his fingers, wondering if any would remain on his head for the celebration of his fortieth birthday, only five months away. He had always thought of bald men as old. Now he was fast becoming one of them, the unfortunate souls who had to put sunblock on their scalps.

  Where had the years gone? Miles remembered so well his first day at work, parading through the marble-floored lobby, nodding to the security guard as if to say “I belong.” He had stood in this very office in a Brooks Brothers suit, striped suspenders, paisley bow tie, and beige trench coat, a Burberry with the recognizable tan, black, and red tartan lining. His first-day-at-work outfit had exhausted the credit line on his Visa card, something he’d gambled he could repay when he got his paycheck. That day he had felt an uncontrollable urge to touch everything, the blinds, the thick Oriental carpet, the Le Corbusier chrome-and-leather chairs. Richard had come in with Belle several steps behind carrying Cristal Champagne at $200 a bottle to drink at nine-fifteen in the morning. “Welcome, welcome to my world,” Richard had said, raising a glass to toast. Belle had toasted, too.

  Although the view remained the same, life changed with money. At twenty-seven, after only a year on the job, his income astonished most of his contemporaries, and Miles quickly learned that money attracted money. Rich people ate together at the same restaurants, socialized at the same cocktail parties and charitable functions, even exercised together at the New York Health and Racquet Club. He joined in, spending his own money, and his considerable expense account, to mingle with potential investors and convince them to take part in Pratt Capital’s newest deal. Then he made money to spend again. A cycle. But it worked. The overall pie increased.

  Plus, Miles’s income gave him an even bigger borrowing capacity. Three years later, a million-dollar mortgage bought him a four-bedroom apartment on 65th and Park, which in turn led him to his wife. She was twenty-three, seven years his junior, and still lived at home with her parents six floors above him. Penny Kraft, now Mrs. Miles Adler, had come with an impressive trust fund and a comparable dowry. His mortgage got him an asset, in addition to a place to rest his weary head. The same cycle.

  In the early days, Richard urged him to gamble and rewarded him greatly for his successes. “If you think it’s sound, I’m behind you,” Richard always said. “Nothing about this business is guaranteed, and I’m not looking for zero risk. All I ask is that you do your homework. Give me an educated, informed basis for your recommendation. If it turns out you’re wrong, so be it. There’ll be other chances. You can’t second-guess a decision once made, and I won’t, either.” Later on, Richard hardly questioned him. He knew it was all about empowerment. Putting together a deal quickly became what Miles Adler did best.

  Miles noted with some pride that he had rarely been wrong. Cleavage-enhancing lingerie, a luxury home goods catalog company, an X-ray technology for detecting plastic explosives, a nonallergenic synthetic material for use
in artificial limbs, all had yielded substantial returns. With each success, he and Richard shared cigars from Richard’s private stash. The safe behind his desk held the humidor. Richard’s praise warmed him like a Turkish bath, soothing the tense muscles and knotted intestines that he lived with every day.

  Although Miles knew he viewed the period before Richard’s stroke through a nostalgic lens, by comparison to his present situation, it had been a great time.

  That changed May 20, a little more than a year ago, the day he learned that Richard was in the hospital. He couldn’t remember which one of the Pratt daughters had called him at home early that morning, interrupting his breakfast and his New York Times with the dreadful news. “Clio thought I should let you know. She asked if you can be home at ten-thirty. She’ll call you then.” He had begged to come to the hospital to wait with the rest of them, but the daughter had made it very clear he wasn’t welcome. He wasn’t family.

  He had been home at ten-thirty, and eleven, and eleven-thirty, all day, in fact, waiting for Clio, and then all evening on the off chance she might still call. He should have known then to get out. He should have realized that he would be subject to her whim, her unchecked veto, if he stayed on at Pratt Capital, but instead he convinced himself that she had more pressing things to attend to. Her husband’s health was deteriorating rapidly. He could understand her distraction. Or maybe in the shock of the news, he had misunderstood the message, and it was his fault.

  Miles missed the writing on the wall.

  Now, the noose of his lousy 43 percent equity strangled him, prevented him from leaving, but also from exercising independence. He needed a controlling interest or nothing at all. Miles sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. No one missed Richard more than he.

  His office door was closed, and Miles sat in peace. He liked the deliberate quiet of this place. The walls were double insulated, improving the acoustics for the operas that Richard listened to— La Traviata was his favorite—as he mulled over proposals and studied business plans. He was the only person Miles had ever met who never raised his voice. “If you have to yell to get what you want, it’s not worth getting,” Richard always said. Richard’s legacy saturated Miles’s pores.

  How had Clio and Richard found each other? Despite his fondness for Richard, and considerable length of time in his employ, Miles knew virtually nothing about his wife or their only child, Justin Henshaw Pratt. Miles had never met Justin, but he had seen the eight-by-ten photograph in the silver frame on Richard’s desk of a smiling boy with sandy hair and red cheeks at the tiller of his sailboat, “Lake Agawan, 1988” engraved underneath, an image taken shortly before Justin’s accidental death. The Adlers had sent a significant contribution to the foundation established in Justin’s memory, but Penny Adler, not Miles, wrote the note of condolence. He convinced himself that she was better at social protocol, but in retrospect, he recognized that his inability to convey sympathy stemmed from an irrational hatred of Justin. Justin was the blood son. Despite Richard’s interest in Miles’s professional development, their relationship could never be familial.

  Clio remained an enigma to Miles. Even after Justin’s death eliminated the threat of a true heir, Miles never made any real effort to get to know her and paid her scant attention when she passed by the office to have lunch with Richard. The Adlers saw the Pratts at certain charitable affairs for YOUTHCORE, the American Cancer Society, the Botanical Society, underprivileged children, diseases and plants being causes to which virtually everyone who was anyone in the city donated. Less frequently, they socialized at cultural events, a Museum of Modern Art opening or the Metropolitan Opera, but most affluent New Yorkers attended these as well, and, at best, small pleasantries were exchanged as the Adlers and Pratts mingled in the crowds.

  Clio Pratt had been on the board of the Guggenheim Museum, that Miles knew, and had been involved with YOUTHCORE, maybe still was. Richard had been president of that organization. Together they raised money to help sponsor activities for inner-city boys and girls, met with city officials to promote its programs in Harlem, Alphabet City, and parts of Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx. Richard had pictures of Clio with Mayors Koch, Dinkins, and Giuliani framed on the wall in his office. YOUTHCORE was the kind of group that politicians loved, and posing with the socialite wife of financial magnate Richard Pratt suited the public office holders just fine.

  Miles realized that Clio had made up her mind on the ProChem matter. Convincing her to change it would be difficult, perhaps impossible. Besides, Pro-Chem wasn’t really the issue. No single deal was. The issue, if one could euphemistically call it that, was that Miles remained a minority shareholder, a useless position when it came to making decisions about investments. Miles needed leverage, real leverage, something that would give Richard and her no choice but to sell him an additional 8 percent in Pratt Capital, to give him back the autonomy he wanted and deserved. But money wouldn’t work. He had tried that several times before, offering substantially more than any reasonable calculation of per share value. Although Richard may have been content to hand the company over, Clio was nobody’s fool. She wanted control as badly as Miles did, and she wasn’t going to part with it lightly.

  Besides cash, cold hard American currency, what could possibly make her change her mind? This Miles contemplated as he gazed out over the lush greenness of Central Park.

  Doesn’t everyone have a secret, he mused, something deep in their past or their present that makes them vulnerable, an experience that is too painful to be exposed? What was it about Clio that could be exploited, not with an outright threat—he wouldn’t resort to blackmail—but something that he could use in a more subtle manner, something that he could hint at, or gently suggest, that might prod her to part with enough stock to give him control? Certainly there were things in his own background that he wanted to protect, some more, some less, important, but all worthy of keeping concealed, even at a price. He had cheated on an Economics 102 exam his sophomore year at Brown University. He had insisted that his then girlfriend, a devout Catholic, abort her accidental pregnancy, although in retrospect he felt certain that she had gotten pregnant to force a marriage proposal anyway. Then there was his baby sister, Rebecca. He couldn’t have known what would happen to her, but it still made him feel guilty.

  Clio had to have something.

  Miles pressed the intercom on his desk. “Belle, can you come in here?”

  “Certainly, Mr. Adler.”

  After fourteen years, couldn’t she call him Miles? While he respected the civility upon which Richard had insisted, the old-guard customs in the office increasingly annoyed him. Miles resisted the urge to push the button once again and explain that he didn’t insist on such formalities, but the conversation was futile. She would thank him for his consideration and ignore his instructions. He didn’t need to repeat that exercise.

  Moments later his door opened and in stepped Annabelle Cabot, a well-preserved woman in her late fifties wearing a fitted brown tweed skirt, high-necked cream blouse with a gold daisy pinned above her left breast, matching earrings, and suede loafers. Meticulous in her appearance, Belle was a handsome woman. “What can I do for you, Mr. Adler?” Her diction was excellent.

  “Belle, does Richard have any information on Clio in his office?”

  She looked perplexed. “What kind of information?”

  Miles coughed to collect himself. “For Clio’s birthday, Penny and I thought we would throw Clio a surprise party. Lord knows she has had a tough time, especially recently. She could use a good celebration. Anyway, I realized that I don’t know very much about her, her childhood, her background, information that might be helpful to the party planner in developing a theme. I could ask Richard, but as you know, it’s difficult to speak to him on the telephone, and I can hardly ask Clio.”

  “Her birthday is not until October.”

  “I know,” Miles lied. He should have remembered that Belle had a calendar imprinted on her brain with i
mportant dates concerning people relevant to her employers. Clio Pratt’s birthday was one of these. “But we’ve got to get organized now. I had no idea of the preparation involved.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be pleased.”

  “Well, I thought she might be more pleased if we could really make it personal, not just another affair, a stuffy black-tie dance in the ballroom at the Waldorf. So I wanted to see if Richard had any materials I could use.”

  Belle wrinkled her forehead, a sign Miles couldn’t read. “Certainly Mr. Pratt has some personal files in his office, but nothing of the sort that might help with your party.”

  “I think I should be the judge of that.” Miles regretted the words even as they slipped out. He knew Belle was territorial, a lion protecting her boss-cub from outside interference, but he didn’t like to be second-guessed. He was her senior, in case she had forgotten. “Where are these files?”

  “Sir, with all due respect, they are Mr. Pratt’s personal files. I just don’t see how I can give them to you without his permission.”

  Miles could practically see her hackles showing through her well-coiffed, professional demeanor. The last thing he meant to do was raise her suspicions. “You know, you’re right. I guess I’ll just have to use my imagination.”

  “A good idea.”

  Miles put his head down and appeared to study the notepaper in front of him. He hoped Belle could not make out from where she stood the circular scribbles all over it.

  “Will that be all?”

  “Actually, you could do me one more favor. I need to pick up a little something for Penny. It’s kind of a special day today,” he said, hoping that she would not ask the occasion. “I’m swamped with calls this afternoon. Could you get something for me?”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Oh, I don’t know, something from Tiffany’s. She always likes the blue box.”

  “How much would you care to spend?”