The Standard Grand

by Jay Baron Nicorvo

  No one was at the helipad to greet her. She spent a moment gathering effects, checking her phone. A weather alert. Harris County was on the western end of an unseasonal continental haze episode. Sounded like a PR concoction designed to put a measure of abstraction between a catastrophe and how to address it. She gazed over the yellowed city parched and dusted by an unbreakable drought.

  Wanting to work out some of the mescal, she bounced her suitcase down three flights of stairs. She waited in the understated lobby on the thirty-seventh floor for her shotgun meeting, called by her boss’s boss, F. Bismarck “Bizzy” Rolling, with whom she was close.

  Unsteady on her sea legs, head splitting, unshowered, she sniffed her hair. Whiff of the platform, oily and oceanic, but it had a nice shine, a springy bounce. She wore her jacquard cap-sleeved skirt suit, something her mamí would call el vestido de una piruja, because it shamefully cut across the back of her knees and offered up a small wedge of cleavage—Ay, Dios mío, ayúdame, Evangelína.

  She tugged down her skirt hem. Bizzy liked and lobbied for her. Papí had worked under Bizzy most of his adult life. Papí’d been among the first Mesoamerican landmen in the States. Evangelína, the lone female graduate in her class at Texas Tech’s Petroleum Land Management program, was one of a few dozen women in the American Association of Professional Landmen, and the sole constituent of the AAPL lesbian caucus.

  Evangelína didn’t know why she’d been summoned. Neither did she understand why she’d been sent offshore. Her specialty was not managing the reconditioning of offshore rigs, out at sea; her expertise was securing leases for drilling and mineral rights. She preferred the water from a sandy beach, daiquiri in hand, or paddling a kayak downriver, in view of both banks. A phenom in the field, she was a failure as a manager. Landowners were more trusting of a woman, which made fellow landmen more distrustful.

  With peeptoe pumps nudging the floor-to-ceiling window, toenails unpainted, she looked dizzily out, her breath condensing on the glass in the overly air-conditioned lobby.

  Bizzy’s executive assistant, Marisol, approached. Evangelína, about to ask for an aspirin, was cut off: “Señor Rolling está listo para tu, Señorita Canek.”

  Evangelína felt a dull confusion. The feeling sharpened into fear. This wasn’t how personal assistants addressed prospective management. It wasn’t the informal tu that worried her; it was the señorita, as if Evangelína were a wayward schoolgirl.

  Bizzy stood backlit by the Houston morning. He didn’t believe in sitting at work, kept to his feet all day at that high desk, practically a podium. Bic ballpoint in hand, he looked more like a philharmonic conductor than chief operations officer of IRJ, Inc., formerly Irvine Raus & Jost. Promoted from a decade-long tenure as Group President, Government & Defense, Infrastructure & Minerals, & Hydrocarbons, Bizzy would likely spend the next five years as COO and retire at seventy-five.

  He didn’t even glance at Evangelína as she stood beside her luggage. She’d known him all her life, and he’d gained appeal with age. He was a charmer but not smarmy, a caballero. Of an older order: no computer, dictated all correspondence to Marisol, conducted business face-to-face, by phone, at lunch, or on the front nine. There was little documentation of what F. Bismarck Rolling said or did.

  His attention was fixed on his small desktop, where rested an imposing corporate document, the bound pages stacked high as a little legislative bill.

  The cold reception, absent eye contact, not a nod of acknowledgement, after being yanked off the Lacie, made her fear for her job. Why was this just occurring to her? In these tight times, the larger the salary, the less the security. Her salary was significant.

  He was stalling, allowing her time to figure this out on her own, so when he spoke the words—Evy, sorry to say we’re going to have to let you go—they wouldn’t come as a shock, and she wouldn’t make a scene. She wondered how long her savings would last. She owned the Montrose two-bedroom townhouse she shared with her mamí, who had no income, and she’d intended to put her savings toward the start of in vitro treatments. If in vitro didn’t take, she’d adopt. That had been her plan, but maybe she needed a new one.

  “Mr. Rolling,” she said, “you asked to see me.”

  Bizzy looked up from behind his standing desk. “I’m sorry, Evy. Troubling morning.” He told her to have a seat, as though she were going to need it.

  “I’ll stand, Mr. Rolling. Thank you.” She felt a burning burp rising inside her like a bad decision she was bound to make. “Like you like to say, sitting’s for Sundays.”

  “And kneeling, Evy.”

  She nodded. A Presbyterian, he’d attended her Baptism and First Communion; she never made it to Confirmation. Papí’s melanoma had taken him by then. Mamí was Maya Catholic, more a devotee of Ixchel and the Virgin of Guadalupe than Christ and his pope.

  “In Tampico,” she said, “I visited the Temple of the Immaculate Conception. I lit a candle for my father.” She was grasping for purchase. It embarrassed her, but broaching the subject of Papí with Bizzy occasionally brought out anecdotes she’d never heard.

  He asked if she wanted something. Coffee? “Know you take it light and sweet, just like your old man.”

  When she didn’t answer, he said, “You sure?”

  She wasn’t sure—she wasn’t even sure what she was unsure of, but she nodded. She learned this from her immigrant parents: when lost in conversation, nod. If you’ve committed to something you shouldn’t have, you can always get out of it later.

  His old hiking boots were ridiculous, tan leather and canvas paired with his tailored suit, boots he’d supposedly tied on for his first assessment trip to the Middle East in ’03, boots he’d worn to work every day since. They said he kept them on because at a moment’s notice he could be called away to the Emirates to negotiate a billion-dollar project.

  She studied the haze out the window. The haze wasn’t Houston’s; the haze was hers. She needed water. “I’m sorry, sir. It’s just, the helicopter ride … I’m feeling a little nauseous, so if you’re going to fire me, please get it over with and let me go home—where I haven’t been in a month—so I can make sure my mother’s still alive.”

  He leaned back, hands on either side of the desktop, and a spark of something—empathy? epiphany?—warmed his eyes. A grin turned up the corners of his mouth. “You want Marisol to get you a ginger ale?”

  She shook her head.

  “How is your mother?”

  She nodded.

  “What makes you think I’ve called you all this way to fire you?”

  She thought of Marisol addressing her as señorita. “The helicopter before dawn,” she said. “The delayed preload. The Fort Worth lawsuits.”

  “The drinking and gambling aboard a company vessel?”

  She felt dulled. After a moment, she reached an understanding: word of her carousing traveled faster than helicopter. She suspected the Belle of Baton Rouge dealer was a company plant. On each platform, there was usually one, reporting directly to the snitchy strivers of middle management. “I really fucked up Fort Worth, didn’t I?”

  “Easy, Evy.”

  “Any word on the lawsuits?”

  “All settled. Out of court. Not small sums. Price of doing business.”

  “So, wait, just so we’re clear here—I’m not being fired?”

  “Not today,” he said.

  She shook her head, woozy.

  “We’ve invested in you, Evy, and I have a vested interest in you.”

  She thanked him.

  “This industry’s come some way. This company’s about much more than petroleum now. Paradigms shift. Whale oil gets scarce, gets costly, and, voila, save the whales. But think how our predecessors, a short century ago, used a eucalyptus trunk to drill a well in what’s now downtown LA. That well produced forty BPD. We went from forty barrels a day in Los Angeles to 260,000 a day in Veracruz, all in the space of twenty years.”

  To hasten the conversation, she said, “
Yes, please, I understand.”

  “Evy, your father was a good Catholic. Your mother, on the other hand, who was an extraordinarily beautiful woman, tends toward idolatry.”

  She felt her legs wobble on her heels. Any accuracy in Bizzy’s statement—putting Mamí’s beauty behind her and her idolatry out front—didn’t lessen the insult. Yet it turned her momentarily against her mamí growing ever older and more irrational. “Idolatry, sir?”

  “Never met an educated woman with so many superstitions. I hope she’s not readying for the upcoming apocalypse.”

  “In December,” she said, “one cycle of the b’ak’tun will end, sir, not the world. It’s like flipping the calendar from 1999. Time to party. Ancient Maya knew how to have fun. The doomsday scenario’s gringo gossip.”

  “Sorry if I touched a nerve, Evy.” He winked, and she reminded herself that when Bizzy liked you, he needled you.

  She told him that her mother, who was still beautiful, would be getting ready for the End by making her mole sauce and enough tamales to feed an army. “There will be leftovers.”

  “Tremendous admirer of your mother,” he said. “Love to hear her tell those stories about shape-shifters. She has a word for them, the changelings.”

  When Evangelína wanted a bedtime story, Mamí recited passages from the Chilam Balam, one book of which she’d translated as a student at Universidad Anáhuac. Evangelína couldn’t do justice to “The Interrogation of the Lady Xoc,” and so she stood silent.

  “She was a sight, your mother.”

  “Still is.”

  “It’s different when you get old, Evy. You’ll see. Your father was a much better prospector than I ever was. But times change. Technology upends everything. Nothing more so than a codger like me. We’re so far removed from the land these days we can’t even get the lay of it anymore without the aid of instruments and experts—that’s why this company’s run by engineers—and then we need advice from a gaggle of lawyers and approval from a slew of politicians. Used to be, you could grease a couple palms and start drilling. Bankroll a cathedral if you absolutely had to. Not any more. God has given way to golf. It’s still horse-trading and back-scratching. The Suite 8F attitude is old hat. The Lamar Hotel’s a parking lot. Now it’s goods and services. It’s all about government contracts. We employ more American private contractors, and hold a larger contract with the US government, than any other firm in Iraq. We built the US embassy in Kabul. We’re responsible for the renovations at Gitmo. Our work in Cuba’s nothing to brag about, but we made that facility safer for the troops and detainees both. Not something to brag about, but something to be proud of. So don’t let your lack of an engineering degree slow you. There’s a place for you here, but it’s up to you to determine where you fit in. I’m speaking to you not as one of your bosses but as a family friend.” Bizzy stared into her eyes for a long moment, then turned and faced the window. “Been in and out of Texas off and on for all my years now—this drought—never heard of anything like it.” He turned around. “Let me get to the point. The Lacie and Forth Worth didn’t play to your strong suits, Evy.” He looked at her over his bifocals. “We’ve got you in mind for something else.”

  “Should I be concerned?”

  “Always, Evy.” Bizzy eyed the TV screens. Here was the reason she was having trouble reading him. She mistook distraction for dismissal. He slapped the open portfolio on his chest-high desk. “We want you in New York. Make a play on a plat in the Catskills.”

  “I didn’t do so hot with the Barnett Shale,” she reminded him.

  “We’re giving you a second shot. You got Fort Worth riled up and raring for a fight. But this isn’t shale gas. This is … something other than.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Sending you north’s a gambit.” He winked. “New York’s no Texas. Lived in Manhattan when I was at Irvine. City was a meaner beast then. But you’ll be upstate. You’ve served us well for nearly a decade, Evy. We owe it to your father. I owe him.”

  She waited.

  “We want to purchase a private property. Under one of the subsidiaries, SW&B Construction. That’s who you’ll broker for. It’ll all be in the portfolio. Marisol has a copy for you. We want to build a luxury golf resort in the Catskills. We’ve an agreement with the PGA, corporate sponsor for what will be a Tour stop, the whole shebang.”

  “But SW&B specializes in paper mills. First Sunrise at Seventeen Seventy and now golf?”

  “Our critics said the same thing about our part in the Great Man-Made River Project. Oil exploration led to the discovery of that aquifer under the Sahara. Oil technology makes the retrieval possible. You’ve been with us long enough to know it’s crucial to keep an open mind. Intents rarely align with appearances. What this country’s all about. Put another way, Evy, you must try to trust me.”

  “Why not use a subcontractor?” She hesitated, then added, “Someone who plays golf, and knows the Marcellus. One of the outfits working Pennsylvania, say.”

  “We want a company person on this one.”

  “And not a company man.”

  He looked at the screens, then back to her. “We’d like a woman’s touch.”

  “Something about the landowner I should know?”

  Bizzy folded back the cardstock cover of the portfolio and showed her a color photo, obviously taken on the sly with a high-power zoom: the landowner looked like a malnourished Kofi Annan. “African-American widower,” Bizzy said, “inherited the property from his wife. Old Borscht Belt resort, defunct for decades. He lives there, has converted some of the buildings into a halfway house for troubled war vets. On the surface, it looks legit.” Bizzy flipped pages. “Swamped with back taxes and late fees as early as ’84. Multiple liens. Six, seven, eight maxed-out credit cards. Some time after the wife died, he brought in an auctioneering outfit to sell off the holdings of the resort’s game farm. According to this—I’m quoting now: The Game Farm was the first privately owned venture to achieve official status as a zoo from the Department of Agriculture. Huh. Two rhinos sold for six thousand and nine thousand dollars to the International Rhino Foundation. Three wisent went for sixty-six hundred—what on earth is a wisent? On and on. The auction brought in 1.7 million, after taxes.” Bizzy read silently until Evangelína grew uncomfortable and began shifting on her heels.

  “I’m sorry, Evy, this is all very interesting to me. I remember the Standard—I’m almost certain it’s G-R-A-N-D-E.” He flipped to the cover, then back. “Brother. What does that tell you? We can’t even spell the name right. Marisol! Hell. Edith tried to get me to go. Not the place for a goy, not unless you were Rocky Marciano training for a fight. We’d drive by on the way to the ski slopes. The TV commercial was in heavy rotation—this was back in the days of three channels—I could probably sing you the jingle, but I won’t subject you to that indignity.” He flipped pages, forward then back. “Zoo spanned more than 900 acres, about half the Standard parcel. Proceeds from the auction got him mostly through the nineties. Granted 501(c)(19) tax status for a nonprofit at the end of ’01. Maybe some fraudulent doings. Maybe embezzling the veterans he’s supposed to be helping. Finding that out will be part of your responsibility. Could provide leverage. He’s claiming annual income in the 200k range, but property taxes take the lion’s share. He owes on equity loans. He’s all upside-down. A lease won’t make a bit of difference to this gent. We’ll shoot for a sale. That doesn’t work, we’ll get more imaginitive. The numbers are showing a couple million in the red, and we understand the county’s about to start foreclosure proceedings. Where is Marisol?” Bizzy took off his glasses and glared at the closed office doors. “There’s also some indication he’s unwell.”

  “Physically?”

  “Could be an insurance scam. Claims Agent Orange exposure.”

  “And we know all this how?”

  “How do we ever come to know anything, Evy? We suss it out.”

  “And I can’t go in straight why?�
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  “You are going in straight.”

  “And if he doesn’t accept golf money, am I going to offer gas money?”

  “If you can’t seal a sale for a golf resort, we’ll consider a plan B. But we’re ready to exhaust all possibilities for a sale. Understand? The risk’s worth the reward on this one.”

  “Even though Cuomo’s balked?”

  He smiled.

  “The governor isn’t by chance a golfer?”

  Bizzy’s smile faded; when he lost patience, he got quiet.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “You don’t get to be in my position by being a tell-all, Evy. But I will say, given your vested interests, that it’s a safe bet—and I know you’re a betting woman—you’ve been following things pretty closely up there. Let me clue you in, because, like I said, politics is now most of what we do. Cuomo signed same-sex marriage legislation back in June of last year. Week later his administration announces they’re seeking to lift the ban on horizontal hydrofracking. You can raise your bet that some of our execs—mind you, not all are as socially accepting as I—never thought they’d live to see the day they’d be supporting gay marriage. That’s a connection the New York Times didn’t report. You with me?”

  “I’m playing catch-up.”

  “Cuomo traded drilling for gay marriage. A win-win. Democrats downstate get concessions on a civil-rights issue. Upstate Republicans, mostly live-and-let-live Libertarians, get jobs in an area hard hit by recession. But Cuomo will backpedal be—”

  A knock rattled the door, and Marisol entered without waiting for permission.

  “Almost done here, Marisol. Evy, you’ll find the information you need in the file. And, Marisol, it’s Grande with an E for goodness sake. Who’s Ellis have working on this?”

  Marisol shrugged.

  Evangelína said, “Is that all, sir?”

  “Let me stress one more thing. Any purchase agreement’s for todo el tamal.” Bizzy’s Spanish was beautiful, too beautiful—he had the condescending pronunciation of a criollo.