For the first time, Mrs. Fitzgibbons felt anxiety; it moved about her insides like something with cold legs. Mr. Zabac’s head was drawn down toward his shoulders. His little shoes gleamed icily, and his cheekbones, glimmering with tiny hairs, darkened to the ominous color of raw meat. Had Mrs. Fitzgibbons not learned lately how to confront danger, and had instead succumbed to her long-accustomed habit of accommodating authority by smiling placatingly and quailing before it, she would have faltered fatally at this moment. It was her proven ability to hold forth in a bright and inspired manner, the words coming unbidden to her lips, the seeming issue of a lifetime of reticence and shyness, that fueled her response.
“If you’re going to insult me,” she said, peevishly, “I’ll hand in my resignation on the six o’clock evening news.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tom Pesso and his camera team from Channel 6 are on their way to see me right now. He’s coming to interview me for the evening news program.”
The chairman looked as though he had been tapped on the top of the head with a heavy tool.
“The people at WKYN are interested in the fact that ours is the first bank in the region to give a woman a meaningful promotion.” She tossed out this last invention with no regard for its validity.
After listening intently, Mr. Zabac emerged from his momentary stupefaction and returned the discussion to its original subject. “Mrs. Fitzgibbons,” he said, “do you, or do you not, understand the harm you did to me and this institution in your newspaper article?”
“I do not.”
Of the two, Mrs. Fitzgibbons was now the more reasonable and self-collected. When Mr. Zabac showed signs of frustration or uncertainty, as he was doing now, a warm, almost sexy feeling ran through her limbs. Nevertheless, she backtracked diplomatically. She did not wish to corner the man.
“I told them you were a prince,” she said, “and you are. I would do anything for you. You know that,” she brought out with sudden heartiness. “Why shouldn’t I?”
“I have no doubt,” said Mr. Zabac, in an even more conciliatory way, “that you meant no harm to me personally, or to the others.”
“What others?” she interrupted sharply.
Mr. Zabac ignored her this time and went on. He stepped away from the window and paced thoughtfully to his desk. “Nor,” he conceded, “can there be any question, Mrs. Fitzgibbons, that your newspaper story has produced a very happy effect today on the popularity and reputation of the bank.”
“No one would argue that!”
“That’s what I said.” Up shot the stubby pedantic finger.
Mrs. Fitzgibbons was in no mood to be lectured. “The deposits are pouring in.”
“I am not unaware of it.”
“It’s the biggest single day we’ve ever had.” She kept interrupting him, determined to steer the discussion to her own purposes.
“In that way,” he said, nicely, “you have shown some considerable skill.” By praising her, he hoped to regain the upper hand. “You have talents.”
“Some of the deposits are enormous,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons sternly.
“You have talents that were not known to most of us.”
“What is Neil doing?” That quickly Mrs. Fitzgibbons swung the discourse onto her adversary.
The chairman didn’t like it. “Mrs. Fitzgibbons! Please. I insist.”
“Did you tell him to sell his holdings?”
“We are not going to talk about that. Our exposure in that area is not great.”
Sure of herself, Mrs. Fitzgibbons persisted. She spoke in the tone of one autocrat addressing another. “I’m glad,” she said. “I’m relieved that you didn’t. Only a moron would eliminate holdings at this stage.”
Like a cardplayer, on discovering each incoming card to be even more welcome than the last, Mrs. Fitzgibbons knew in a flash by the painful wince in the chairman’s face that he was not in sympathy with Mr. Hooton’s decisions. Unable to quell her joyous feeling, she turned and paced to and fro on the big Chinese carpet. “That’s all we’d need,” she continued invidiously, feigning ignorance of what Mr. Hooton had just done. “To have our treasurer make us the laughingstock of the entire state — on the very day when every depositor who saw my picture in the paper, and who read what I had to say, is lining up at our windows.”
While stepping about, she gestured modestly with her fist. “They liked my interview,” she said. “Everyone did. It gave them confidence in us. That’s why they’re pouring in here this morning. They wanted to be told that we’re up to the minute and not just some roadside, drive-in pack of money-grubbing amateurs risking our money on deadbeats.”
“That’s not the point,” he argued.
“That we’re going to be sleek and dynamic,” she added. “That our competitors are in for a fight now. They’re feeling sick this morning. A week ago,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons fired at him, as though citing the most incredible of facts, “the public didn’t even know our name! That’s criminal. After what we’ve done for thousands and thousands of them. They know it now,” she said. “I gave it to them.”
Once again, although despairing somewhat, Mr. Zabac endeavored to broach and thrash out his objectives; but Mrs. Fitzgibbons turned and faced him.
“Someone had to tell them. Tell me I did wrong.”
She would like to have said much more but decided it was time to present the dapper little chairman with a picture of the beautiful, self-assured figure to whom he would presently be entrusting total power downstairs. She was standing very straight and holding his gaze without a blink. She studied him with her midnight blue eyes as he strove to summon the necessary courage.
“I see only one way out for us,” he said at last, with finality. “You will have to make known to everyone that while you are my director — you may use the word director — of our home loan department, any greater implications that have been erroneously disseminated —”
“That’s ridiculous.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s snappish response sounded more like a wife refuting her husband over some minor domestic squabble than of a bank executive intent on seizing authority. “It was in the newspaper,” she reminded him.
“But don’t you see,” Mr. Zabac cried, “you put it in the newspaper.”
She calmed him with a raised hand. “No one should hear us. Otherwise, there’ll be no stopping the rumors.”
In the face of Mr. Zabac’s sudden resentful outburst, Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s self-control was a thing of beauty. “This is my plan,” she said. “I’ll go on television in an hour, and I’ll bring you on with me. We’ll go on camera together. We’ll be on the evening news tonight. And I don’t mean for a few seconds. They’ll guarantee us sufficient air time, or I’ll refuse to do it.”
The abrupt shift in subject to that of the WKYN news team silenced Mr. Zabac, as he appeared both alarmed and enchanted by the prospect. “You needn’t worry about having to say very much or answer a lot of questions,” she said. “I’m comfortable with it and will keep the ball rolling nicely. That’s my forte. That’s my job. Let’s don’t worry, Louis, about tromping on the toes of some people downstairs. They’ll be sitting home watching us on television, just as a hundred thousand other people will be doing, and will know that the bank is on the move.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons continued more robustly. “You gave them every chance. What are you supposed to do, massage them to sleep at night? The publicity will be worth a fortune. It isn’t even measurable!”
Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s vigorous recital was accompanied by attractive movements as she gestured prettily and turned her head this way and that. She felt his eyes glued to her. If her gathering moral ascendancy over the man involved a sexual component, what was the harm in it.
Mr. Zabac tried again. “I admit that you did wonderfully in your interview, Mrs. Fitzgibbons. I was impressed by the length of the article, by its prominent position in the paper, and by its obvious results.”
“Only I could have done that.”
&n
bsp; “Please.” He protested the interruption.
But Mrs. Fitzgibbons had an inspiration. “I hope that Mrs. Zabac saw it,” she exclaimed.
“She did, I assure you.”
“I hope she read every word. I hope she was proud of you. What did she say about your appointing a woman like myself?”
“She couldn’t imagine who you were. She couldn’t believe you had worked for me all these years.”
Here Mrs. Fitzgibbons decided to seize the nettle. Until now, her instincts were unerring. It was time for Mr. Zabac to vacate the field of dispute.
“Between ten o’clock this morning and noon,” she said, “I received two very attractive job offers. I turned them both down. I intend to stay here. The only way I would leave is by being compelled to leave.” Again, she regarded him with a level stare. “I can’t go home today without knowing exactly where I stand. I can’t function in a cloud. It’s essential I have the proper authority to do the things I want to do.”
Mr. Zabac listened carefully to every word. If Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s locutions sometimes involved the language of violence, it only served to dramatize her resolve.
“They will carry me out dead,” she said. “There has to be somebody downstairs to crack the whip. And I’m not talking about” — she raised her voice — “people in bow ties who go to pieces at the first sign of trouble.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons looked adamantine. “The head of your capital markets desk has a foot-wide yellow stripe down the middle of his back, and is downstairs whimpering like a baby, and doing, I’m sure, the worst thing he could possibly do. The man is liquidating everything in sight!” she cried. “You know it, and I know it. I’m not like that!” Her contempt for her adversaries suddenly shone through. “These fair-weather dandies! With their little spectacles and clipboards and fake Gucci loafers. Why, it’s enough to constipate a cat. They’d take me out of here on a slab before I’d back down.” She was very close to him now, showing him the beauty of a truly determined woman. “You’re going to have to fire me, Louis. You’re going to have to do it today.” She put her face close to his. Her navy blue eyes flared. “You’re going to have to cut my head off.”
“No one is talking about firing.”
“This place is my life. It’s everything to me. It’s meat and drink to me. I know what I’m doing.”
“I don’t want to demote you, and I don’t want to fire you. After all,” he protested, “I’m not simpleminded.”
“I need full authority to do what needs doing.”
“You’re unreasonably impatient,” he exclaimed. “It’s only days since we moved you into Mr. Frye’s post.”
“And look what I’ve done. That’s all the time it took me to do it. I didn’t need more than a few days, any more than I needed more than five minutes this morning to bring Tom Pesso and his cameras right into your office. That’s the way it should be.” Mrs. Fitzgibbons gave a name now to the position in question. “Your chief executive officer should always have her chairman’s best interests in mind first, and she should be capable of doing good new things. It isn’t enough just to plug away like a little drudge behind a desk and shiver in your timbers when the going gets rough.”
Mrs. Fitzgibbons, at the moment, looked truly magnificent. The excitement in her blood brought a bright light to her eyes and set her whole body aglow with animation. She sensed Mr. Zabac’s growing inability to stand up to her and instinctively modulated her discourse — not, however, without treating the point at issue as a resolved fact. “I’m not going to be making waves by firing people, either,” she said (a statement that might have left many a psychiatrist shaking his head). “In fact, I won’t dismiss a soul.”
“A senior vice president,” the man offered with a sigh, “must be expert in all areas of finance.”
“As often as not,” Mrs. Fitzgibbons returned smoothly, “there are more important things. I don’t have to understand everything there is to know about the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, or about inverted yield curves, or any other such mysteries, as long as I know who does know. What does the president of this country need to know about interstate highways? Or the price of a Venezuelan barrel of oil, for that matter? Leadership is different from that. Leadership downstairs!” Her bracelets tinkled as she pointed a long arm significantly toward the lower storey. “Those people need someone to be accountable to. Someone with some backbone to her.”
Just as Mr. Zabac appeared to resign himself to Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s single-minded onslaught, a smile of relief came to his lips. “My goodness,” he exclaimed, charmed anew by the phenomenon standing before him.
“No one down there will defy me,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “I have the willpower.”
“If you get out of hand, even in the smallest way, I shall ask for your resignation. You understand that.”
The chairman’s sudden capitulation had an instantaneous effect on her, as the severe drain on Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s constitution gave way to relief. “You’ll never be sorry! I promise you. If we’re here a thousand years, you’ll never regret it, Louis. Never,” she said. “Never.”
Mr. Zabac laughed genially. “And you’re not going to fire Mr. Hooton.” He made a joke of it.
“You have my word.”
“And,” he went on, evidencing relief himself, with a light-spirited note, “all of this with the understanding that your chief tasks will be in administration” — he looked at her squarely — “and in public relations?”
Mrs. Fitzgibbons was thinking lucidly. “As long,” she insisted, “as your official memorandum naming me as chief executive officer doesn’t say so.”
Mr. Zabac nodded. “It will be our understanding, yours and mine.”
“Then I agree.” Her eyes were expanded and concentrated. “And you’ll never be sorry.”
“You already said that.”
“Never,” said Mrs. Fitzgibbons. “I swear it on the head of my dead husband.”
“That’s not necessary,” he returned mildly.
An observer looking in would have seen Mr. Zabac smiling like an enchanted dwarf while Mrs. Fitzgibbons stood over him vowing eternal fidelity in a frightening voice.
“I swear it on Larry’s head. On all that’s holy.” With that, Mrs. Fitzgibbons went quickly to the door and called in Mr. Zabac’s secretary. “Bring your steno pad,” she said.
While Mr. Zabac sat forward in his tall leather armchair and dictated notice of the appointment of Mrs. Frances Fitzgibbons to the post of senior vice president and chief executive officer of the bank, Mrs. Fitzgibbons stood behind Jeannine Mielke’s chair and watched with unconcealed satisfaction as the secretary’s pencil scratched quickly across the lined pages. When the secretary completed the last page, Mrs. Fitzgibbons dictated the conclusion. “Effective immediately,” she said.
“Effective immediately,” agreed Mr. Zabac.
While the natty little chairman might not have noticed Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s expression, the secretary, upon rising from her chair, and stealing a quick, curious upward glance at the bank’s newly appointed senior officer, found herself the target of a pair of liquid blue eyes gloating with menace.
The transaction in Mr. Zabac’s office affected Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s breathing and nervous system for many minutes afterward. Once or twice, she stopped to take a deep breath. The stimulation and sense of triumph left her feeling very anxious, like someone who had been handed, or had just stolen, a valise full of money. Her voice was steady, though, when she spoke. “It was like taking candy from a baby,” she said to Julie. “I should have had this job years ago. He knew what he was doing. He knew exactly what he was doing. Somebody’s going to feel it, too. Won’t I settle an account or two. Won’t I? They’ll see if I won’t.”
A quarter hour after closing, when Julie Marcotte looked in to notify her that Tom Pesso had arrived with his associates, Mrs. Fitzgibbons collected her wits instantly and came out. She met Mr. Pesso in front of her office. The perfection of her grooming and her attractively d
raped figure brought a quick appreciative smile to the announcer’s face, as the woman standing before him was nothing less exciting in person than in the big color photo in the paper.
Mrs. Fitzgibbons turned to Julie, who stood blushing with pride, and sent her upstairs with a flick of her hand.
“Tell Mr. Zabac I want him,” she said.
From that first moment, as she turned to face the television crew, Mrs. Fitzgibbons knew she was in wonderful fettle.
EIGHT
And Louis trying to hide behind me the whole time!” she was saying that evening, very pleased with herself.
“And didn’t you let him,” Bruce attested, with a victorious shout.
“Naturally, I did. It was me they came to see.”
Because Bruce had had the foresight to record on video cassette Mrs. Fitzgibbons’s television appearance that night on the Channel 6 evening news, he had captured the most memorable seven minutes of her life on film for all time. To savor better her triumph, Mrs. Fitzgibbons came to Bruce Clayton’s home that evening for dinner. When she arrived at the apartment on Brown Avenue at eight o’clock, the sedulous politeness lavished on her at the door by her beautician and by Matthew Dean, his friend and housemate, was fitting of royalty. And when Mrs. Fitzgibbons, pushing her way in, in her best cocktail dress, remarked approvingly on the crowded, comfortable, artfully decorated rooms that Bruce and Matthew shared — with mysterious glimmerings of crystal lights twinkling behind white voile draperies, the walls covered with a striking collection of sconces, hangings, medieval-looking tablets, and prettily framed watercolor paintings, not to say a luxurious amount of great soft pillows thrown everywhere — both the young men made an open show of their relief, as though their lives had depended on her approval.
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