She thought that was awfully funny.
“I want to thank all of you—all of you—for your dedication, for your hard work, for your commitment to the standards of excellence that my husband instilled in this company so many years ago,” Mrs. Szereto said. “I want especially to thank Diane Dauria for the straight course she has been steering since taking command of this ship.”
I was surprised by the crowd’s reaction to Mrs. Szereto’s compliment. Apparently Diane was far more popular than I would have supposed—at least for the evening.
“I also want to thank the nerds in product development. Time and time again we’ve been first to the marketplace with the best and most innovative products. You guys are geniuses. When companies like Barek Cosmetics accuse us of unfair business practices, I take that as a compliment on your ability to anticipate the needs of the market long before anyone else. Terrific job.”
More applause.
“Unfair business practices?” I asked.
“Every time we introduce a new product, they accuse us of stealing their trade secrets,” Ridlon said.
“Now all of you—including Kent,” Mrs. Szereto said, “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow … tomorrow you all have the day off. I expect to see you all back hard at it, though, Monday morning.”
The crowd gave Mrs. Szereto a nice ovation, but it lasted only until she left the stage, went over to Kent, and gave him a hug. The ballroom emptied as employees proceeded to the bars and food tables, Ridlon and her husband among them. I drifted to a bar. They didn’t have a beer I liked, so I ordered bourbon. The drinks were free. There was a tip jar, though, and I threw in a ten.
I eavesdropped on the conversations around me. Most employees seemed pleased with the size of their bonuses, although a few suggested in low voices that they deserved better. A voice that was not low, however, suggested that the amount was ridiculously high. It came from a man standing in the corner near the bar. He had black hair combed back with gray at his temples and over his ears; yet someone else who wore a tuxedo better than I did. Pamela Randall stood in front of him as if she were trying to shield him from the other guests. Or maybe it was the other way round.
He waved what looked like a double whiskey and said, “It’s our damn money the bitch is throwing around.”
She said, “Now’s not the time.”
I drifted toward them, pretending to be invisible, so I could hear better.
“Eleven-point-five-eight fucking percent—who gives out numbers like that? Nobody.”
“Would you please lower your voice?” Randall said.
“It’s fiscally irresponsible, those kinds of numbers. It comes right out of our dividends. We, the minority shareholders, we should sue. Corporate malfeasance is what it is.”
“Stop it, Neil.”
“You’re on the board. Did you vote for this?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Why?”
“Because my measly six and a half percent wasn’t going to beat Evelyn’s sixty-six percent, so why make a thing of it?”
“Fifty-six percent. She only controls fifty-six percent now.”
“Do you really think Groot is going to vote her ten against Evelyn?”
Wait, my inner voice said. Candy owns ten percent of the company?
“You do this every year, Neil,” Randall said. “Whine, whine, whine. This is how they run the company. This is how they’ve always run the company. More to the point, this is how they ran the company when you bought your stock. Get over it. We’re all making money.”
“We would have made a damn sight more money if we had sold to the Europeans when we had the chance.”
“There’s no way Evelyn was going to sell the family business.”
“The son was keen on the deal.”
“It was never going to happen. Besides, I have something bigger in mind.”
“I’ve seen that look before. Oh, you do have something going on, don’t you? What? Tell me.”
“No. Now shut up and dance with me.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Dance with me now or you don’t get to dance with me later.”
The couple moved into the dance hall, and I thought, That was an awfully effective line Randall came up with; made Neil do her bidding just like that. I hope Nina never uses it.
* * *
I drifted from one room to another and saw Sloane sitting alone at a small table with a white linen tablecloth littered with New Year’s Eve party favors. Her elbows were on the tabletop and she was squeezing her face between her hands, yet even then she couldn’t make herself look ugly. She jumped up when Diane entered the room and moved quickly to her side. She said something in the older woman’s ear. As she spoke, Diane glanced at her expensive watch and nodded her head. Sloane hugged her mother tight and went off in the direction of the front door. Diane watched her go.
I glanced at my own watch as I approached—9:55 P.M.
“Off to the Hotdish party?” I asked.
Diane flinched. “McKenzie, you startled me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m surprised that you’re still here.”
“Evelyn wants to speak to me.” Again I used her first name on purpose.
“What about?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know or you won’t tell me?”
“Normally I enjoy it when people are annoyed with me. Yet somehow with you…”
Diane pulled her hands behind her back, which stretched the material of her gown across her breasts. There was nothing carnal about it, though. She was a peacock merely displaying how repulsed she was by my presence.
“Mrs. Szereto is still in the ballroom,” she said. “Talk to her and go.”
TEN
A tight knot of people surrounded Mrs. Szereto, yet her eyes found me when I entered the room. She gestured with her head. I followed the gesture to Vanessa. She was sitting in one of the chairs against the wall and speaking with a man who seemed to be studying the single teardrop pearl that hung between her breasts. I might have expected that from a hormonal kid, except he was a solid decade older than Vanessa was, and you’d think he’d have seen pearls before. I glanced back at Evelyn. She gestured more emphatically. I set my drink at the foot of an empty chair and moved toward the young woman. She smiled at me.
“McKenzie,” she said.
I extended a hand.
“May I?” I asked.
Vanessa took the hand.
“Of course. Excuse me,” she told her displeased companion. We moved toward the stage. “Thank you for the rescue.”
“It’s my pleasure.”
“Tell me, though. Are we dancing because you want to or because my mother-in-law insisted?”
“I’m doing it because you’re a lovely young woman and I want to know more about you.”
“Ha.”
The band swung into an extended cover of “Autumn Leaves,” the female vocalist singing the original French lyrics followed by Johnny Mercer’s English translation. Vanessa and I claimed a corner of the dance floor near the stage. The couple I heard complaining earlier were in the opposite corner.
“Do you know who those people are?” I asked.
“I don’t know the man,” Vanessa said. “The woman is Pamela Randall. She’s on the board of directors.”
“I overheard them earlier. They’re not happy about the size of the bonuses Szereto is handing out.”
“I don’t care.”
Vanessa slipped into my arms. We moved in a tight circle, holding each other close—but not too close. At the second turn I noticed Jack McKasy leaning against a wall. He was staring as if he were hoping his heat vision would burn me to a crisp.
“He doesn’t like me at all,” I said.
“Jack? That’s because you’re doing what he probably wants to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Dance with me.”
“I take it y
ou don’t have that kind of relationship.”
Vanessa’s head fell back, and she looked at me with a shocked expression. “I wouldn’t be involved with him,” she said.
“What about your mother-in-law?”
“That’s an awfully provocative thing to ask.”
“Just trying to learn how things work.”
“It’s difficult living in the same house, yet we both try hard to maintain a certain level of privacy and discretion.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I can’t answer your question. I can tell you one thing, though…”
“Yes?”
“Sometimes Evelyn calls him ‘Happy Jack.’”
“When?”
“When do you think? What you need to remember is that Evelyn’s husband has been dead a lot longer than my husband.”
“From our conversation yesterday, she seems quite concerned about your social life.”
“She means well, only— The woman has been very, very good to me and my son, but the men she’s introduced me to—I have heels with higher standards than she does.”
“The man I saved you from, was he one of them?”
“Couldn’t you tell? I’m done with older men, though.”
I had no reason to be disappointed by Vanessa’s declaration, yet I was.
Watch it, my inner voice told me.
“Do you know what Evelyn told me this morning?” Vanessa asked. “She said what I needed was for a man to fuck me good and proper. And so on and so forth. That’s a direct quote, by the way. The first part, not the second.”
Now it was my turn to look shocked. Vanessa laughed at me.
“What surprises you, McKenzie? That she would say such a thing or that I would repeat it?”
“Both.”
“Evelyn can be quite earthy when she wants to be. So can I.”
“That’s the second time I’ve heard that word today.”
“Tell me, McKenzie. What do you think of recreational sex?”
“Is this a trick question?”
“Not at all.”
“I suppose if the participants are both on the same page…”
“I’m not asking about the participants. I’m asking about you.”
“When I was a kid, I was both a devout believer and a frequent practitioner. Not anymore.”
“What do you believe now?”
“I believe in love.”
Vanessa rested her forehead against my chest. She spoke into my shirt.
“So do I. I always have. Try explaining that to Evelyn.”
Her head came up, and she looked me in the eye.
“I loved my husband,” she said. “Jonny betrayed me in the worst way possible, and I still loved him. What does that say about me?”
“Nothing bad.”
“I don’t believe in fate or destiny, McKenzie. I believe our lives are shaped by the choices we make along the way and the consequences of those choices. I was a naïve twenty-year-old fashion model who fell in love with a man twice her age. I don’t regret that decision, only what Jonny made of it. Now I’m faced with more choices, some of them forced on me by my mother-in-law. I choose love. I will find it again. I won’t rest until I do. What else do you want to know?”
I wished the song would end. I wished it would end so I could put as much distance as possible between myself and this beautiful, intelligent, charming, and heroic young woman who moved so effortlessly in my arms. I thought I should get out of there. It seemed to me a fellow could get into some very serious trouble there. Yet the song kept playing and we kept dancing.
For a while I kept my eyes off of her. In the far corner, Pamela Randall was grinding against her partner like a needy debutante with a boy her parents didn’t approve of. Near the door, Evelyn was still holding forth with her courtiers.
“What does your mother-in-law think of your decision?” I asked.
“If she doesn’t like it, she can move.”
“Move? I thought this was her house.”
“No, it’s mine. It’s all mine; I own everything. Most people don’t know that, the employees, the shareholders. What happened—I barely knew my father-in-law, McKenzie. He seemed like a nice man, everyone says he was, but he was old and in ill health when I met him. Jonny and I had been married for only a few months when he died. Anyway, he was twenty years older than Evelyn and had always assumed that he would go first and she would inherit. Except Evelyn was—is—a beautiful woman and young. He believed that she would probably remarry after he passed, and he didn’t want a stranger—her second husband, obviously—taking possession of everything he built. He drew up a will when his son was born stating that Evelyn would be made very comfortable—he left her millions, McKenzie—only he made sure that everything else, the company, this house, all of his other property, would go to Jonny. Evelyn knew this. She told me later that she didn’t mind. She thought it was very fair what Mr. Szereto did, leaving it all to her son. I expected the same thing, especially after I became pregnant. Except Jonny was … killed … before he got around to it, before he drew up a will or put anything in trust. So I inherited it all, me and my son.”
“Yet Evelyn is chairperson of the board,” I said.
“Better her then me. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to run a company this big, to run a company of any size. I was an English major in college; I didn’t even graduate. If Evelyn wants to—McKenzie, don’t get the wrong impression. I love my mother-in-law. Like I said, she’s been very good to me. If she wants to be in charge, if she wants to run things, let her. If people assume that she owns the company, that’s fine with me, too. As far as I’m concerned, it’s all hers until my son is ready to take over. He will take over, too, McKenzie. I have a will. I have trusts set up. Everything goes to Jon.”
“When the Europeans attempted to buy the Szereto Corporation, it was you who said no, then, not Evelyn?”
“It was me. Evelyn was delighted to hear it, too. Especially when I let her vote my proxy. It proved to her that I intended to make sure that my father-in-law got his wish, that the company would remain in the family. It was a turning point in our relationship. Up until then I wasn’t sure she approved of me. Now we get along very well. We’re both devoted to my son and to Szereto.”
“What about Candy Groot?”
“What about her? Oh, wait. I forgot. The codicil. A couple of years after my father-in-law died, Evelyn found a handwritten codicil in his papers where he wrote that he wanted ten percent of the company to go to Candace. He said he could never have built Szereto without her. Jonny wanted to challenge it in court even though Evelyn was adamant that the codicil was legitimate. I don’t think she wanted to see ten percent of the business go to an outsider, either, but she was determined that all of her husband’s last wishes be respected. It got pretty ugly for a while there, too, between the two of them … and then … So much happened so fast, McKenzie—Jonny’s death, the police investigation, the inheritance, my son’s birth. Whoever said ‘That which does not kill us makes us stronger’ was a fool.”
The song ended. We stopped dancing. Vanessa looked me in the eye.
“Tell me you have a girlfriend,” she said.
“I do.”
“Tell me that you love each other more than anything.”
“We do.”
“That’s what I want.”
I kissed her cheek.
“That’s what I want, too,” I said.
* * *
When I turned around, both Pamela Randall and Mrs. Szereto were gone, but Jack McKasy was still there; he hadn’t moved from his spot against the wall. Only now Candy Groot was with him, speaking animatedly. Jack nodded his head, yet his eyes remained fixed on us.
I thanked Vanessa for the dance and went searching for Evelyn. Jack shook his head as if dislodging a daydream and spoke sharply to Candy. Candy replied in kind. Jack turned and left the ballroom. I went through the other door. Candy watched me.
She had a drink in her hand. She downed the contents and followed after Jack.
The crowd had thinned somewhat; many of the guests had heard what they had come to hear and moved on. What remained was still formidable, however. It took some time to search the many crowded downstairs rooms. In one of them I discovered Randall sitting at a table strewn with cone-shaped hats and noisemakers. The gentleman she had hushed earlier sat across from her; two other couples sat on either side. Our eyes met.
“Looking for that dreary little secretary?” she asked.
I knew who she meant, yet I made myself look puzzled just the same.
“The woman who owns ten percent of the Szereto Corporation?” I asked. “That dreary little secretary?”
“It’s given her delusions of grandeur,” Randall said. “Please join me.” She rapped the tabletop with her knuckles. “May we have a moment, please?”
The other guests rose from the table and left the room without comment as if they were used to being summarily dismissed by the woman. Randall patted the chair next to her. I sat. At the same time I threw a thumb in the direction her friends went.
“Power happy?” I asked.
“It’s my weakness, dear. I love to have the little people jump when I want them to jump.”
“Yet Candy kept both feet firmly on the ground.”
“She neglected to introduce us. I’m Pamela Randall.”
“McKenzie.”
“McKenzie.” She said my name as if were something she wanted to taste to see if she liked it. “You’re not Candy’s friend, though, are you? You work for Evelyn.”
“If you say so.”
“Either her or—tell me, McKenzie. Did you enjoy your dance with the little princess?”
“If you mean Vanessa Szereto, yes, I did enjoy it. Very much.”
“Poor beautiful young rich girl, tragically torn from the love of her life, single mother cut adrift in the cold, cruel world—do you picture yourself as the hero riding to her rescue?”
“She hardly needs rescuing.”
“What exactly are you doing for Evelyn?”
“We’re back to that, are we?”
“Does it involve deliberately eavesdropping on private conversations?”
I didn’t say.
“I saw you at the bar,” Randall said.
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