Stillman shook his head. “Fo wasn’t in this time zone then. We’ll have to settle for prime rib, medium rare. And bring us more of these.” When the waiter was gone, he said, “That’s what everybody had before words like ‘cholesterol’ crept into the language. They’re all going to be surprised after a lifetime of deprivation when they die of nothing.”
Walker said, “They should spend time with you, and they wouldn’t have that to worry about.”
“So buy yourself some insurance. I need to hear about Ellen.”
Walker had intended to sip his drink, but he noticed that the ice at the bottom already clinked against his front teeth. The drink was like a black hole that sucked everything around it into the glass and disappeared with it. He said warily, “I don’t know a lot. You’ve seen pictures of her, right?”
“One in her file, and one copy of her company ID card. An escapee from cheerleader detention camp.”
“She looks that way,” Walker agreed. “Mildly athletic-looking, but not tiresome about it. I don’t even know if she did anything to stay that way. She was alert and serious about the training classes. I remember she had a few interests that didn’t have anything to do with work. I told you about the music.”
“By the way, that was a reasonable try, kid.” Stillman raised his glass in a mock toast. “They like evidence that you’re listening when they move their lips. I wonder why it didn’t fly. Is there a boyfriend?”
“The word I got was no.” He stared into space for a moment. “Cardarelli. That’s who told me. Now that I know Cardarelli better, I guess that didn’t mean it was true. But Ellen didn’t say anything about a boyfriend when she went out with me, and that would have been the time.”
“No, before that would have been the time. What did she talk about?”
Walker was thinking about her again, searching for a sign that he had missed. No, there was nothing, even at the end, that showed she was thinking about another man. Stillman was staring at him, waiting.
“The one time you took her out,” prompted Stillman. “What did she tell you?”
He needed an answer, and he was stuck with the lie that he had only taken her out once. He settled on the first time, at the Italian restaurant. He would answer questions about that. “As I remember, I guess she talked mostly about the future.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear,” said Stillman. “We seem to be in it, so I’d like to know what the hell it is.”
Walker tried to bring it back. “She had a kind of overall strategy. She was convinced that a woman in a big company like McClaren’s had to make things happen, or they wouldn’t.”
“Are we talking about endearing ourselves to upper management? Dirty old men my age?”
“If we were, I didn’t get it. What she said was that she had to be patient. Getting herself into the San Francisco office would put her into competition she couldn’t beat.”
“Like who?”
Walker shrugged. “Men, I guess. I think she mentioned Kennedy as an example. People who went to better colleges, and were just as bright and worked just as hard as she did.”
“Who else?”
“Well . . . me,” he said uncomfortably. “But it was just because if she hadn’t said that, she probably thought I would have been uncomfortable. She wanted to be in one of the branch offices, but a particular kind. She said she didn’t want to insure ship’s cargoes or satellite launches or something, because the customers are the sort of men who wouldn’t take her seriously. She said cute and perky weren’t qualities they looked for.”
“It sounds like something that might be true. But what about the tone? When she said it, what was her voice like? Bitter? Angry?”
“Not really. She figured that things were improving for women, but the time wasn’t right yet. She said if there were layoffs at McClaren’s, she’d be safer in an office with four people than in one with four hundred. She would concentrate on family stuff: life insurance gets bought by men, but the survivors are widows, and the minute there’s a payoff, they’re women with more money than their husbands had the day they died. There’s no tax on it, either. But the tax kicks in hard for the next generation, so she would sell them life insurance to pay that for the kids, and probably long-term-care insurance because they were alone now, and if the money was big enough, she’d convince them to let the company manage it.” He shrugged. “She figured that who she was and the way she looked would give her an edge.”
“What did you think?”
“The numbers add up the way she thought they did—actuarial tables on male-female longevity, and so on. I don’t know if the rest of it does. There are too many intangibles. It seemed smart at the time—she
“So she ended up in Pasadena. Did she plan that too?”
“She said that was one of her choices. There was Pasadena, some place in Orange County, Scottsdale in Arizona, Palm Beach in Florida, a couple of others. The idea was to be in a place where the demographics work out—income level, age of population, and so on.” He let his drink swirl around, listening to the ice on the glass.
Stillman looked at him speculatively. “She must have sold a lot of insurance to make assistant manager in a year and a half. That’s a rank above the rest of you, right?”
Walker nodded. “She said that would happen—that promotions come more quickly on the front lines. And she must have made something on commissions. If she made a dollar, it’s more than an analyst gets.”
“But what was the point of it—the end?”
Walker smiled. “I got the impression that in twenty years, when the rest of us have become permanent drudges in our cubicles, and some have killed each other off in main-office politics, she expects to come back. If present trends play out, in those twenty years the status of women can only be better. At that time she could be well up the ranks, maybe vice president and regional manager of a big chunk of the country. Then, if there’s a certain combination of circumstances, she could end up running the company. She didn’t say what the circumstances were.”
“It would help if she changed her name to McClaren.”
Walker shrugged. “You’ll have to suggest it to her.”
Stillman studied Walker as he said, “Actually, I think I know what she has in mind. Dynasties have a life span. She probably thinks that at some point, either there won’t be enough McClarens, or there won’t be the right McClaren. There could even be too many, so the stock is spread too thin among people who don’t know each other. A competitor could start buying up those shares. It doesn’t matter what it is. Each year brings the end closer.”
“Really?” said Walker. “No more McClarens at McClaren’s? Then what?”
“Hard times,” said Stillman. His eyes drifted around the room as he spoke. “The company loses money. This happens to insurance companies on a fairly regular schedule. Then you’ve got a bunch of people in the San Francisco office who are associated with the discredited practices or decisions that failed. And you have a woman —she’s only forty-four at this point—who has twenty-two years with the company and runs operations in some big, successful region. Because she’s been out of sight, nobody knows anything negative about her. She gets a phone call from the board of directors.” He suddenly returned his eyes to Walker. “How would you feel about that?”
“Me?” Walker looked surprised. “You mean would I be jealous or something? I don’t think so. And I could think of worse people to work for.”
“Really? Who?”
“It’s just an expression,” said Walker. “I meant she was good, not that anybody else was bad.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Stillman. “Now I understand why she wasn’t interested in you. You’re a nagging boil that appeared on her ass after she bought a nonrefundable plane ticket.”
“It’s nice to make an impression on people.”
Stillman held up his hands. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure you’re a young woman’s fantasy. A delightful, spiritual companion on life’s highway who’s hung like a horse. But that’s all beside the point, isn’t it?”
“It wouldn’t be to me.”
“She’s whoring after strange gods.”
“She’s what?”
“It’s just a line from a book nobody reads anymore. What it means this time is that it wasn’t you she turned down. It’s men. And women: she can’t be a lesbian because that would be even harder to fit into the vision. If you’ve got a plan that’s sure to fail unless absolutely everything happens in a certain way, then you have to make it all happen that way. A boyfriend in the San Francisco office would be a deviation.”
