Pot of gold : a novel

by Michael, Judith

  "They lose the fifty thousand if they don't buy the brown-stone. That much sounds genuine. She has come through on a lot of causes, you know; it's just that she's not a person you'd want to bet on."

  "But Hannah did."

  "And so did you. Unwittingly."

  "Did your friend at the Times find out if there's a schedule for opening the Exeter Poetry Center.''"

  "No, it's vague. Exeter called Stan at the Times about a month ago and sent him a press release—he wanted Stan to do a story, to help with other fund-raising; I don't know why; maybe he was worried about Mrs. Manasherbes—but Stan said it wasn't a story yet but he'd be interested if it ever became one. Fhe press release didn't have dates for renovation or ribbon cutting or anything else. Are you staying here over the holidays,'^"

  "Yes," Claire said.

  "Will you have dinner with mc tonight.''"

  "I'm busy tonight. I wish I weren't."

  "Then tomorrow night."

  "I'd like that."

  "And what will you do at Christmas?"

  "Probably duplicate our Thanksgiving dinner. We were all happy being together; it was a good way to celebrate. What will you do.^"

  "Duplicate Thanksgiving. I think my sister's in-laws will be there, which will swell the crowd. When I was a kid," he said reflectively, "we had upwards of fifty people for Christmas. My parents gathered in all the strays from miles around, anyone who didn't have a family, and my sister and I made name tags and played usher, getting everyone seated and making sure they had cider to drink. Nothing harder than cider; we couldn't afford it and my parents didn't believe in it. Then we'd hand out Christmas presents that my mother had made: cookies wrapped in colored tissue paper, small loaves of raisin bread in foil wrapping paper, little jars of strawberry jam with striped ribbons tied around the lids. My mother had a passion for strawberry jam. I'd listen to all those people who didn't know each other, or didn't see each other from year to year, getting acquainted or reacquainted, telling their life stories, trying to impress everyone, even though most of them were out of work or not doing the jobs they really wanted, or just divorced or whatever it was that made them eligible for my parents' table of strays. I'd wander from one small group to another as they got together in different rooms to sing carols or play chess or Chinese checkers or help in the kitchen. It was like theater; that's when I started to think about being a writer. My sister and I loved it; we got so excited we didn't calm down until halfway into January. What did you do for Christmas.'"'

  "We went to a neighbor's house. Their son had been killed in the war and they wanted to have the house crowded at Christmas, with us and their married daughter and her family and a few others that,I guess you'd call strays. It wasn't as exciting as yours sounds; when I got older, I wanted to go to my friends' houses. In fact, I begged my parents to let me go, but they always said absolutely not; we had an obligation to help our neighbors fill their house at Christmas."

  "You're like that now, aren't you.^ You have a strong sense of obligation."

  "Yes, of course. The world would be an awful place if people didn't have it."

  "A lot of people don't. They make it tough for those who do. Have you finished your work for Eiger.''"

  "Almost. I hope I'll have a new job, or maybe more than one by the time I'm finished; I don't want to have to look at empty drawing tables. They always remind me of a cemetery. What about your work.^ You still haven't shown me your article."

  "It's finished." He took a folder from his briefcase and crossed the room to hand it to her.

  "Is this for me to keep.'' I'd like to read it later."

  "It's yours. Change anything that's egregiously wrong and let me know, within a couple of days if possible. I have to be going; I had a dinner date with my son for tomorrow night and I want to change it to tonight."

  "Will you be able to.?"

  "It's a school night; he won't have any other plans. Have you a preference for dinner tomorrow night.'*"

  "You decide."

  "Is there any kind of ethnic food you can't abide?"

  "None. I like them all."

  "An admirable woman." He pulled on his leather jacket and picked up his briefcase. "By the way, a friend of mine has a play opening in the Village next Tuesday; would you like to go.'' I've read it; I think it's very good, and they've got a good cast."

  "Yes," Claire said. "I've never been to an opening night."

  "There's a party afterward, unless that makes it too late for you."

  Claire smiled. "I don't have a curfew."

  "Good. Neither do I." He took her hand and held it for a moment; what had once been a handshake had become a lingering clasp of friendship. "Good-bye, Claire, and thank you once again for letting me share this wonderful place."

  "I enjoyed it. It seems empty when you're not here."

  He paused in the doorway. "Thank you for telling me that."

  Claire sat on her high stool for a long time after he left, gazing at the door and her cluttered drawing table and the furnishings of her studio without really seeing them. She was content to sit. She had no desire to go anywhere.

  "Won't you be late.''" Hannah asked, standing in the doorway. "Or aren't you going.''"

  "I'm going. I just can't seem to get moving."

  Hannah came in and sat in one of the armchairs. "Emma left half an hour ago. She said to tell you she'll be late."

  "She's always late."

  "But at least she comes home. That one night—"

  "She promised not to do it again. I don't think she liked it. What do you think happened at Thanksgiving, Hannah, that made her so different.'' I'd duplicate it, if I knew how."

  "I imagine it was a little vacation from all the things that are troubling her. And I think it was a first step. Now that she's had one vacation, she's going to want another one, and she'll look for ways to make it happen."

  "Speaking of vacations, I'm going to dinner with Alex tomorrow night."

  "What a fine idea. It's taken you a long time to get around to it."

  "Has it.^ I've only known him a few weeks."

  "And you've been preoccupied with Quentin. Are you still.'"'

  "Sometimes." Claire stood and moved aimlessly about the studio, trailing her hand across the small animal sculptures she had grouped on tables and windowsills. She knew she was putting off getting dressed to go out with him.

  "You know, my dear," Hannah said, "by now you ought to have some very definite ideas about him. kx. the very least, you ought to know exactly what he wants from you and what you want from him."

  "What he wants from me," Claire mused. "A decorative companion. A hostess for his parties. An intelligent, knowledgeable listener who can discuss business and politics and the arts. A woman who enjoys sex. A loyal and dedicated employee. Someone who isn't anxious to get married."

  "And you're all those things."

  "He seems to think so."

  "And what do you want from him.^"

  "Now.'' I'm not sure. What I did want, in the beginning, was his world: different people, different lives, different ways of thinking about people and things. I didn't know how to live Quentin's kind of life. He taught me. He took me there."

  "And now.''"

  "Now I've seen it and it's very pleasant, but there's less there than meets the eye."

  Hannah chuckled. "I know all about that. I once broke off with a man because his only goal in life was making his company the biggest in town so he could swing his weight around without interference. He was rich and good-looking and knew all the best restaurants and which nightclubs had little private rooms upstairs, but there was no poetry in his heart and no music in his soul and I told him so." She nodded as she met Claire's quizzical gaze. "I think you're ready for poetry and music."

  "Hannah," Claire asked, "how many of your stories are true.^"

  "Oh, dear." Hannah shook her head. "Why would you doubt me.^ Is it easier to do that than to think about breaking off with Quentin.?"

>   "Of course not," Claire began in annoyance, but then she thought about it. She did have doubts about Hannah's stories, but why had she brought it up now.^ Maybe Hannah was right: maybe she had brought it up because Hannah had given her the best reason of all to break with Quentin, and she was afraid of facing it. Poetry and music, she thought ruefully. She had been with Quentin for six months. He still could arouse her with a touch or a word, but part of that, she knew, was the aphrodisiac of power: she reveled in the attention she got at his side, and it, too, was a kind of arousal. Quentin Eiger made ease and luxury and acquisition seem the natural order of things. "It's a very comfortable way of life," she murmured.

  "But would you be uncomfortable without him.''"

  "You mean, would I miss him.'' I don't know. Not a lot, I think. But that doesn't mean I want to lose his particular kind of excitement." Claire sat on the arm of the chair near Hannah. "It's heady stuff to be on his side of the fence instead of the other side, watching the fun."

  Hannah sighed. "I'll tell you what I think about Quentin Eiger. I'm sure he's essential to the smooth functioning of our economy, and I should be grateful to him and people like him, all those millions of businessmen with their eye on making money and swinging their weight around, because they're no doubt responsible for food being shipped so efficiently to our grocery stores, and cars and planes being built so we can whiz about the country with ease, and clothes coming from all over the world, and all the rest of it. I grant him and his kind all of that. But it seems to me there is little joy in him."

  Claire sat still, staring unseeing at the black squares of her windows and the mounded snow visible on the windowsills. Little joy in him. And there never has been, she added silently. She thought back over the months they had been together. He was determined and aggressive, forceful, confident, and skillful in whatever he undertook, but everything Quentin did, even his lovemaking, was without buoyancy; he never really let go. All his real energy and focus, and whatever passion he had, was bound up in the drive to succeed in one sphere, and then go on to another, wider and more influential, and then another beyond that. His friends knew that; they had told her more than once. Everyone knew, and so did Claire, that Quentin was more interested in the bottom line and the horizon than in the people he carelessly gathered around him.

  He knew which nightclubs had little private rooms upstairs. Yes, he knew the little secret places of the world and how to use them. He was exciting and fascinating and sexually powerful. And there was no joy in him.

  "Thank you, Hannah," Claire said, standing up. "You have a way of putting everything in perspective." She bent over Hannah and kissed her on both cheeks. "You're wonderful at that. I have to get dressed; we're supposed to be going to dinner."

  "Supposed to be.'"'

  "I don't think we'll get there. I think I'll be home very early. In fact, if you're making dinner for yourself, save some for me."

  On Saturday afternoon, in mid-December, Eiger Labs sat silent and dark beneath the heavy clouds that lay low over the land. Here and there a light was on in the offices and laboratories and signs of life could be heard: the tapping of computer keys, the clink of a coffee cup, the rush of water from a faucet at a laboratory table. Gina let herself in the side door that was kept open during the day when the rest of the building was locked and made her way along a dim corridor to the testing lab. No one was there. The testing tables and the offices along one side of the large room were still and dark; they looked abandoned, as if everyone had fled. Or died, Gina thought, because there was something ghostly about the silence.

  She shook herself. Enough of that; she was there to look for . . . something; whatever she could find. It was her last chance

  before she left. Test reports, she said silently. Always kept in the same file, but maybe there's another set somewhere. If I were altering test reports, would I keep the originals.^ Of course not; I'd destroy them. But people don't; for some reason I don't understand, they keep them. All those executives at dozens of companies like Dow, Ford, GM, Monsanto—even a president of the United States—kept everything, even the most incriminating documents and tapes. So it's worth another look.

  She heard footsteps and froze until they faded. Have to hurry, she thought, and, in the pale light from the corridor, went to the file cabinet from which Kurt had pulled the reports he had shown her. She shone her flashlight into the top drawer. The reports were still there. She riffled through the rest of the folders in the drawer, each on a different product of the PK-20 line, but no more on the Eye Restorative Cream. She opened the next drawer and then the two below that and skimmed reports on other Eiger products, documentation, interviews, analyses. But there was nothing else on PK-20.

  They got rid of the originals, she thought. Or Emma misread the memos and there's no problem and never was.

  She sat back on her heels, her flashlight on the floor beside her. If there were original reports that had been altered, they could be in any file cabinet in the room, or in any of the offices. It would take hours, days, to go through them. Well, if I can't find them, I can't, she thought. I don't know what else to do. If Emma weren't so sure of what she'd read in those memos . . .

  The memos. Gina raised her head and looked down the length of the room, toward the corner office. Kurt's office. Kurt is the head of testing; the memos would have come from him. And Kurt is leaving, he says, for a better job, though he won't say where. Would he bother to erase everything from his computer.'' I'll bet he wouldn't. I'll bet he's thinking about the future, not the past. I'll bet it's all still there.

  Excitement flared within her, the kind of excitement she felt in the lab when she saw that something was going to work, the kind she felt when she first rode a horse at Roz's farm, the kind she felt about Roz. There are times when we know what we're doing is right, Gina thought; the words almost sang in her head. And this is one of them.

  She shone her flashlight on the floor and made her way along

  the side of the room, past open doors, to Kurt's office. She turned off the flashhght. The last light of the gloomy afternoon barely penetrated the room through its corner windows, but Gina could make out the computer keys, and that was all she needed.

  She closed the blinds on the windows and switched on the computer, pulling up the list of files. There were over a hundred for PK-20, each with its own identification code. "PK-20— testpre," she read, and struck a key to bring the document to the screen. It was a preliminary plan, from two years earlier, setting out the guidelines for testing all the products in the new line. In a few minutes she found the final plan, written three months later. Gina sighed. Ninety-eight files to go.

  But she soon learned which ones she could skip. The code for test results was the date of the test and its sequential number in Kurt's final plan. So, since the memos Emma saw were probably written in October, when she saw them, or September, at the latest, Gina looked for the numbers 9 and 10 and a high sequential number, and those were the ones she brought up on the screen and scrolled through.

  To: Quentin Eigerfrom Kurt Green. Per our discussion with Hale Yaeger, we're expanding the test on Restorative Day Cream, Restorative Night Cream, and Eye Restorative Cream to include black women, 250 from cities in the North, 150 from the South. Test findings should come in at about the same time as . . .

  Gina exited that document and brought up another.

  . . . early tests on the exfoliant scrub indicate minor contamination, probably from the equipment; later tests, on a different unit, were clean. We should purchase a replacement for the first unit; the cost is $175,000 and I strongly recommend that. . .

  "Damn," she muttered, and got rid of that one and brought up another.

  . . . toner A preferred by 65% of the subjects; toner B preferred by 15%; 20% did not like either one. Of those, 17%: said it dried their skin. A possible solution is to make it clear rather than pale blue; women like things that look clean.

  "What does he know about what women like," Gin
a muttered, and called up another file and then another. She found nothing in October, nothing in September. She went back to August and found nothing. This is ridiculous, she thought, it can't go back this far. But, doggedly, she went on, into July.

  PK-20 human sensitivity tests {test #2)

  The latest test results of PK-20 products confirm a 4% to 5% incidence in test subjects of allergic skin reactions. Subjects experienced some of the following: minor burning, itching, irritation, folliculitus, acneform eruptions, and allergic contact dermatitis. In addition, 1% of the subjects who used the Eye Restorative Cream experienced an allergic conjunctivitis, and one subject had a severe reaction, which resulted in blindness in one eye (Note: we may be able to show that the subject used the product improperly . . .)

  Gina read it again. Just what Emma had said. And they knew it last July. But where's the Latin Emma said she saw.^ Oh, she said there were two.

  She turned on the printer and printed out the memo, then turned back to the computer and went further into Kurt's test file, scanning the documents, until she came to March.

  PK-20 human sensitivity tests {preliminary report) . . . 4% of test subjects experienced a variety of minor allergic skin reactions. A few subjects exhibited conjunctivitis, which may have been caused by the bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa or from an allergic reaction to one of the compounds in the product, either of which could cause corneal damage. The lab should have their report on the cause. . .

  Still reading the memo, Gina printed it. She rummaged through the desk drawers until she found a box of blank floppy disks, then inserted one in the computer and made a copy of both memos. In case anybody decides to erase things. She tucked the printed copies and the disk into her shoulder bag and turned off the computer. The room was plunged into darkness. Though it was only five-thirty, it was dark outside. Getting late, she thought; what time does the maintenance staff come in.'' For the first time she was nervous and thought it was better not to use the flashlight; instead, she fumbled for the dustcover and fit it over the computer, ran her hands over the desk drawers to make sure they