by Judith Gould
Slowly Leo was running out of steam. Beads of perspiration, first a trickle and then a downpour, rolled relentlessly down his forehead, stinging his eyes and blurring his vision. He was breathing heavily and concentrating with such fierce absorption that tears formed in his eyes. His foil began to feel as if it weighed a hundred pounds. His arms and legs grew leaden.
The audience could feel the match drawing to a close. Breaths were held; eyes watched unblinkingly.
And still Duncan came furiously at him.
Leo cursed. It was incredible. Was there no stopping Duncan Cooper? It was as if the longer the match continued, the stronger and more powerful he became.
Leo Flood knew that he couldn’t keep his wearying defensive up very much longer. Soon he would have no energy left to ward Duncan off. He had one more chance, one last-ditch chance to win. But it would have to be swift. And it was now or never!
“Son-of-a-bitch!” he growled, and valiantly drew on his last reserves of strength. Deflecting Duncan’s foil, he lunged in a feint and aimed for the heart.
Duncan wasn’t fooled for an instant. Almost casually he slid the thrust away and swung upward. The two foils locked, and in one smooth motion Leo’s was torn from his hand.
With a clatter, it fell to the floor.
Leo started after it, but Duncan’s voice stopped him. “Touché,” he said softly with a smile.
Leo froze and looked down at himself. Duncan’s foil was resting precisely in the center of his uniform’s red heart.
The audience applauded, then dispersed, everyone going back to his business.
Duncan lowered his foil. “Not bad, Leo,” he said quietly.
Leo chuckled without humor. “But not good either. You fenced better than anyone I’ve ever seen.” He paused. “You’re bleeding pretty badly, sport.”
Duncan touched his cheek, glanced at his bloody fingertips, and shrugged it off. “It’s nothing.”
Leo tilted his head. “There’s just one thing I want to know. You could have cut me open half a dozen times, Cooper. But you didn’t. Why not?”
Duncan stared at him. “I didn’t feel the need to,” he said coldly. “Drawing blood isn’t the point. There would have been no sport in it.”
He stood there a moment longer and then started off across the polished floor.
Leo’s voice stopped him. “Cooper!”
Duncan turned around and looked at him questioningly.
“Don’t forget. Before you go, be sure to leave me your ex’s number. She won her backing fair and square.”
Duncan nodded. “Just remember one thing,” he said quietly. “Ex-wife or not, Eds is very special. You don’t draw blood from her.” His eyes held Leo’s. “Is that understood, sport?”
Chapter 40
Thursday morning.
“Rise and shine! Breakfast time!” Ruby announced cheerfully as she busted into Edwina’s darkened bedroom. She marched efficiently about, drawing aside the floral chintz curtains. A flood of bright spring sunshine dazzled the room, made rainbows of the collection of crystal animals on the nightstand.
Edwina moaned and turned over. “Leave me be, Ruby,” she cajoled into her pillow, her ruffled pink sleep mask still covering her eyes. “I was up half the night reading.”
“Humph!” Ruby stood there, hands on hips. “Probably one of those novels I’d be ashamed to be seen with on the subway.” She clapped her hands sharply. “Up-up-up!”
“Oh, Ruby! Just give me ten teeny-weeny itsy-bitsy more minutes? Please?”
“It’s ten-thirty and you’ve got a phone call.”
“Well, just tell ‘em to call back!” Edwina wailed. “I need my beauty sleep!”
“Seems to me what you really need is money,” Ruby mumbled dourly.
“Money?” Edwina said, suddenly as alert as a bloodhound spotting a bird. “Did I hear someone say . . . money?” She shot up into a sitting position and sent her sleep mask skimming across the room like a Frisbee. Unprepared for the blinding sunlight, she let out a gasp and shielded her eyes with a cocked arm.
“Figured that would get you up,” Ruby chuckled.
Edwina scowled with indignation. “Then there isn’t a call?”
“There’s a call, all right,” Ruby said calmly.
“Well? Who is it?”
“Some man by the name of. . .” Ruby sighed and shrugged. “It was on the tip of my tongue, but I forgot it now,” she said with a flap of her hand. “Anyway, whoever it is, it’s not him. It’s his secretary.”
“Did you ask her what he wants?”
“That’s no business of mine!” Sniffing righteously, Ruby sailed back out.
Still shielding her eyes, Edwina groped for the bedside extension phone. “ ‘Lo?” she mumbled into it.
“Miss Robinson?” a Locust Valley lockjaw inquired. “Miss Edwina G. Robinson?”
“Yes.”
“One moment, please, and I’ll connect you with Mr. Flood.”
“Who?”
“Mr. Flood. Mr. Leo Flood.” The secretary’s hushed voice made it sound as if she was talking about God or the President, or both.
Frowning, Edwina speed-searched her mind. Now, where had she heard that name before? Flood . . . Flood . . . Flood! Her tangle of frizzy red hair practically stood up on end. Hellzapoppin! Not the Leo Flood whom Fortune and Forbes agreed was worth a hundred zillion dollars! Then her shoulders sagged and the tingling left her scalp. No, she thought soberly, it couldn’t be. It had to be another Leo Flood—probably some insurance salesman from Yonkers who’d picked her number out of the phone book. Had to be. Because what would a zillionaire who had never even heard of her be doing calling her?
A man’s voice came on the phone. “Miss Robinson?”
“This is she,” Edwina said stiffly. If she’d come awake just for some salesman or survey taker, she was going to let him have it—but good!
“Let me introduce myself. I’m Leo Flood, of Beck, Flood, and Kronin. Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
Heard of him! So it was that Leo Flood. But if you get a call from heaven, you don’t drop to your knees and start kissing feet immediately. You inspect carefully for corns and calluses first. “Yes,” she said cautiously, fighting to keep her voice steady, “I’ve heard of you.”
“Good. And you, I take it, are the Edwina G. Robinson who used to be employed by Antonio de Riscal and are considering forming your own firm.”
For a moment she was too stunned to speak. She could hear his faint breathing on the line. Finally she managed a whispered “Yes.”
“Then you and I should meet. Since I’m considering investing in fashion,” he went on, “and you’re looking for a backer, it might behoove us to get together to talk shop. How does lunch tomorrow sound to you?”
Lunch with Leo Flood!
But before she could get too worked up, a nasty little green creature started whispering vile things in her ear.
“You weren’t,” she asked suspiciously, “by any chance put up to this by R. L. Shacklebury, were you?”
“Who?” His confusion sounded genuine.
“Just a joke,” she said weakly, sending the nasty little green creature scurrying. Everything inside her was a sudden chorus of wonders.
Leo Flood interested in backing her! Oh, thank you, God. Thank you, thank you. Thank you!
“Then I take it it’s a date?” he asked.
“Just give me the when and the where, and I’ll be there,” she promised shakily.
“My office on Wall Street? At noon?”
She tried to reply, but her throat was clogged.
“Miss Robinson? Are you still there?”
She cleared her throat. “Y-yes,” she said hoarsely. “Yes, I am. I . . . I’ll be there, Mr. Flood. I’ll—”
“Good,” he said, cutting her off before she could blabber on like a fool. “I’m looking forward to meeting you. Sixty-nine Wall Street at noon tomorrow. See you then.”
The traffic in the financia
l district was more stop than go; she’d make it faster on foot.
At the corner of Broadway and Fulton, Edwina pushed three crisp five-dollar bills through the payment slot, said, “Keep the change,” and ducked out of the cab. In one hand she lugged the giant portfolio into which she’d stuffed many of her fashion sketches, and with the other she hung on to the shoulder strap of her black glove-leather bag—a crime-stopper method of foiling purse-snatchers.
She stood a moment on the corner, breathing deeply and looking around to get her bearings. The narrow confines of the downtown canyons trapped the cacophonous anguish of hopelessly snarled traffic and amplified it unbearably: honks, sirens, backfires—all punctuated by the shrill whistles of bicycle messengers.
Her nostrils narrowed of their own accord and her eyes expressed disapproval. The air stank, a mixture of one part oxygen to two parts carbon monoxide, and the sidewalk thrummed from the constant pounding of hundreds of pairs of swiftly moving feet. Whichever way she looked, she could see the bobbing of the crowd, like a single surging liquid entity topped by uncountable human heads.
All at once, excitement suffused her, and Edwina got moving. Entering 69 Wall Street with five minutes to spare, she crossed rapidly through the lobby and pushed her way into an overcrowded elevator.
Beck, Flood, and Kronin, Inc., occupied the twenty-first through twenty-eighth floors.
She got off on the twenty-first.
It was like entering another era and another continent. The reception area could best be described as clubby. There were masculine leather chesterfield sofas and Queen Anne-style leather chairs. Gloomy paneled walls. Somber yellowed portraits and hunting prints. All of it, Edwina knew, had been designed to impart an air of solid, unshakable permanence—as if Beck, Flood, and Kronin, Inc., hadn’t been formed a mere four years earlier, but had been there since Henry Hudson had sailed along these shores.
The receptionist smiled up at her and made a hushed call. Soon a woman in a severely tailored dark blue suit and white blouse arrived. Edwina followed her down a muffled corridor. They passed traditionally decorated offices and conference rooms, and at one point Edwina caught sight of a giant glass-walled room filled with computer terminals, in which gesticulating young men were on telephones while simultaneously keeping an eye on the electronic stock-market board sliding by up near the ceiling.
Presently they came to the executive offices. The transition was instantly obvious. The English portraits on the walls were bigger and better: dukes instead of rich merchants. And the antiques were genuine instead of reproductions.
And there in Leo Flood’s outer office, behind a three-hundred-year-old desk, sat Miss Locust Valley Lockjaw herself. She was a cold fish. Aloof, thin, and superefficient. Dressed in gray pinstripes, the silken ruffle at her collar unable to soften the edges. Edwina’s keen nostrils didn’t detect so much as the faintest whiff of perfume.
“Mr. Flood is in conference at the moment and apologizes for the delay,” she said dismissively from between clenched teeth. “Please have a seat. I’m sure he’ll be with you shortly.”
Edwina smiled brightly, sat down in a Chippendale chair, and crossed her legs. Presently four stoic Japanese businessmen left the inner office, identical briefcases in hand, and the intercom on Miss Lockjaw’s desk sounded.
Miss Lockjaw looked up. “Miss Robinson, you may go in now,” she said, getting up to show her into the inner sanctum. As she held the door open, she smiled. Actually showed teeth.
Edwina stepped into the office. The first thing that hit her was the silence. The place was like an undiscovered tomb. Obviously a lot of soundproofing had gone into it. And then she looked around and was really impressed. It was a corner office with two walls of windows and had been carved out of two entire floors. The ceiling seemed to reach to heaven. Sleek laburnum paneling shone like glass. There was no desk, but there were no fewer than three coffee tables. And three groups of leather seating arranged around them. All in electric-blue glove leather! Her very shade!
Her estimation of Leo Flood instantly rose sky-high. Weather permitting, she wished she’d worn her sheared electric-blue-dyed mink cape.
Leo Flood was standing by the windows, hands clasped behind his back. Sensing her presence, he turned around and strode across the vast expanse of carpeting. “Miss Robinson.”
Edwina took his proffered hand. Gripped it as firmly as he gripped hers. “Mr. Flood.”
He grinned. “Leo,” he said reprovingly. “If we’re to do business, you’ll have to call me by my first name.”
“And you,” Edwina laughed, “can call me Eds. All my friends do. I’ve been stuck with it since childhood.”
“Your mother must have had some sense of humor. Do you know, you’re the first Edwina G. Robinson I’ve ever met?”
“I can believe it.”
He looked her over. “I like your suit.”
She looked down at herself and smiled wryly. “You should,” she said, looking back up at him. “It’s Antonio de Riscal. Spring 1988 collection.” Bought in flusher times, with her twenty-five-percent employee discount, she didn’t add.
“I’m surprised you’re not wearing one of your own designs.”
“That’s because I’ve only just begun. Everything’s still in the planning stages.”
“If all goes well, maybe you can give de Riscal a run for his money, eh?”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do,” she said with quiet conviction.
He grinned broadly. “That you will, I’m sure.” Suddenly he laughed. “You know, you remind me of myself when I first got started. It was, oh . . . eight, nine years ago. Someone had set up an interview for me at Salomon Brothers for a real low-echelon job, but one I would have killed for at the time.
“ ‘What do you really want to do?’ I was asked by the man in personnel.
“Would you believe I had the gall to say, ‘I intend to be a multimillionaire by the time I’m thirty’?”
Edwina laughed. “And what happened?”
“Needless to say, I didn’t get the job. But the thing that got me was the guy’s reaction. He just stared at me and said, ‘What’s supposed to happen to your job if you do become a multimillionaire? Then we’re out of an employee trained at our expense.’ At first I thought he was joshing me, but he was serious! Of course, the reality of my doing that was practically zilch. But the fact remains, it did happen, Eds! And I learned three valuable lessons from that interview that I’ll never forget.”
She looked at him, intrigued.
“Lesson number one,” he said softly, “is that dreams can come true. Number two, that Salomon lost one hell of an executive—and potentially tons of money—by turning me away. And number three, the most important lesson of all: had I worked for them, all this”—he gestured around the huge office—”would never have happened.”
Edwina stared at him.
“It makes you think, doesn’t it? Come on, let’s go sit down.” He took her by the elbow and guided her over to one of the seating groups. She noted that he placed her so that she faced a Goya painting, while he faced an electronic stock board built into the laburnum paneling.
But all he seemed to have eyes for was her. The green quotations slid by silently and unnoticed.
She took a moment to assess him. From the top of his ebony hair to the unmarred soles of his beautifully crafted hand-sewn black shoes, everything about Leo Flood was beautifully turned-out and exceptionally groomed. The tailor-made silver-gray silk suit, obviously from Savile Row. The lightning-bolt slashes of his Slavic cheekbones. The manicure. The tan. The twin rows of Hollywood-perfect teeth, marred only by the too-sharp predatory canines. Had he not smiled so much, he would have been almost frightening in his cold physical perfection.
But handsome, she conceded, feeling a sudden tightness squeezing her gut. Unsurpassingly handsome. No. His looks went beyond handsome, she amended. He was almost beautiful in a Dark Angel kind of way.
As she suddenly
realized that he was examining and assessing her just as keenly as she was evaluating him, a blush, like two scarlet lollipops, burned through the brilliant makeup on her cheeks. Quickly she looked away.
“I suppose,” he said, breaking the awkward silence, “my call must have come as a surprise.”
She turned back to him. “It did,” she admitted, glad their mutual inspection was over. “But what I don’t understand is—why me? With everyone out there, what do you want with me?”
“Simple.” He looked at her shrewdly. “I think you’ve got what it takes.”
“I see,” she said dubiously.
His eyes were riveted on hers. “Unlike that fool at Salomon Brothers, I make it a point to seek out and back bright young talent.”
She frowned. “Okay. But I’m curious about another thing. Why fashion? The garment industry doesn’t seem to be what this place is all about.”
“This place is about business,” he said, “about the lowest common denominator: profits. And fashion is a business. I don’t think I need to tell you that the garment industry is the biggest industry in this city.”
“No,” she murmured, “I already know that.”
“And just so that we’re clear about one thing, when I say fashion, I’m not talking about a few ball gowns here or a few couture suits there.”
She sat up a little straighter. “Then what are you talking about, Leo?” she asked in a hushed voice.
“A big, brand-new major firm,” he said. “One that will become a power to be reckoned with and will eventually go public for big bucks. Something more along the line of Liz Claiborne than Scassi.”
She could only stare at him. “You’re talking about a billion-dollar-a-year business!” she said, shocked.
“Yep.” He leaned back and grinned. “That, in a nutshell, is my long-range plan.”
“And the short-range plan?”
“To back you financially and see that you help get us a goddamn foot in the door.”