'I'm not making a speech.' Her husband rose from the dinner table and reached for a second decanter of Clos de Vougeot '62. Tonight Lewis looked as puny and as underfed as ever. He continued, 'I’m talking calmly and lucidly about The New York Times which, in my opinion, is an effete pinko rag, its unwarranted prestige a monument to American imbecility.'
'It has a bigger circulation than your newsletter,' Margot Bracken said. 'Is that a reason you don't like it?' She and Alex Vandervoort were guests of Lewis and Edwina in the D'Orseys' elegant Cayman Manor pentbouse. At the table, in soft candlelight, napery, crystal, and polished silver gleamed. Along one side of the spacious dining room a wide, deep window framed the shimmering lights of the city far below. Through the lights a sinuous blackness marked the river's course.
It was a week since the controversial interview with Alex had appeared in print.
Lewis picked at a medallion of beef and answered Margot disdainfully. 'My twice-a-month newsletter represents high quality and superior intellect. Most daily newspapers, including the Times, are vulgar quantity.'
'Stop sparring, you twol' Edwina turned to Alex. 'At least a dozen people who came into the downtown branch this week told me they'd read what you said and admired your outspokenness. What was the reaction in the Tower?' 'Mixed.' 'I'll bet I know someone who didn't approve.'
'You're right.' Alex chuckled. 'Roscoe did not lead the cheering section.'
Heyward's attitude had recently become even icier than before. Alex suspected that Heyward was resentful, not only of the attention Alex was receiving, but also because of successes with the savings drive and money shops, both of which Roscoe Heyward had opposed.
Another downbeat prediction of Heyward and his supporters on the board had concerned the eighteen million dollars in deposits from savings and loan institutions. Though the S&Ls managements had huffed and puffed, they had not withdrawn their deposits from First Mercantile American. Nor, it now seemed, did they intend to.
'Apart from Roscoe and any others,' Edwina said, 'I bear you've a big following these days among the staff.' 'Maybe I'm a swiftly passing fad. Like streaking.'
'Or an addiction,' Margot said. 'I've found you habit forming.'
He smiled. It had been heartening over the past week to receive congratulations from people whom Alex respected, like Tom Straughan, Orville Young, Dick French, and Edwina, and from others, including junior executives he had not previously known by name. Several directors had telephoned with words of praise. 'You're doing the bank's image a power of good,' Leonard L. Kingswood had called to say. And Alex's progress through the FMA Tower had, at times, been near triumphant, with clerks and secretaries greeting him and smiling warmly.
'Talking of your staff, Alex,' Lewis D'Orsey said, 'reminds me you've something missing over in that Headquarters Tower of yours Edwina. It's time she moved higher. While she doesn't, you people are losing out.'
'Really, Lewis, how could you?' Even in the candlelight it could be seen that Edwina had flushed deep red. She protested, 'This is a social occasion. Even if it weren't, that kind of remark is quite improper. Alex, I apologize.'
Lewis, unperturbed, regarded his wife over his halfmoon glasses. 'You may apologize, my dear. I won't. I'm aware of your ability and value; who's closer to it? Furthermore, it's my custom to draw attention to anything outstanding which I see.'
'Well, three cheers for you, Lewis!' Margot said. 'Alex, how about it? When does my esteemed cousin move over to the Tower?'
Edwina was becoming angry. 'Stop it, pleaser You're embarrassing me acutely.'
'No one need be embarrassed.' Alex sipped his wine appreciatively. 'Um '62 was a fine year for Burgundy. Every bit as good as '61, don't you think?'
'Yes,' his host acknowledged. 'Fortunately I put down plenty of both.'
'We're all four of us friends,)' Alex said, 'so we can speak frankly, knowing it's in confidence. I don't mind telling you I've already been thinking about a promotion for Edwina, and I've a particular job in mind. How soon I can swing that, and some other changes, depends on what happens in the next few months, as Edwina is well aware.'
'Yes,' she said, 'I am.' Edwina knew, too, that her personal allegiance to Alex was well known within the bank. Since Ben Rosselli's death, and even before, she realized that Alex's promotion to the presidency would almost certainly advance her own career. But if Roscoe Heyward succeeded instead, it was unlikely she would go any higher at First Mercantile American.
'Something else I'd like to see,' Alex said, 'is Edwina on the board of directors.'
Margot brightened. 'Now you're talking! That would be an onward up for women's lib.'
'Nor' Edwina reacted sharply. 'Don't equate me with women's lib ever! Anything I've achieved has been on my own, competing honestly with men. Women's lib its catchwords, asking for favoritism and preference because you're a woman has set sex equality back, not forward.'
'That's nonsense!' Margot seemed shocked. 'You can say that now because you've been unusual and lucky.' 'There was no luck,' Edwina said. 'I've worked.' 'No luck?' 'Well, not much.'
Margot argued. 'There has to have been luck involved because you're a woman. For as long as anybody can remember, banking's been an exclusive men's club yet without the slightest reason.' 'Hasn't experience been a reason?' Alex asked.
'No. Experience is a smokescreen, blown up by men, to keep women out. There's nothing masculine about banking. All it requires is brains which women have, sometimes more abundantly than men. And everything else is either on paper, in the head, or in talk, so the only physical labor is hoisting money in and out of armored cars, which women guards could undoubtedly do, too.'
'I won't dispute any of that,' Edwina said. 'except you're out of date. The male exclusivity has already been broken by people like me and is being penetrated more and more. Who needs women's libbers? I don't.'
'You haven't penetrated all that far,' Margot shot back. 'Otherwise you'd be in the Headquarters Tower already, and not just talking about it, as we are tonight.' Lewis D'Orsey chortled. 'Touche, my dear.'
'Others in banking need women's lib,' Margot concluded, 'and will for a long time.' Alex leaned back as always, enjoying an argument when Margot was involved. 'Whatever else might be said about our dinners together,' he observed, 'they're never dull.'
Lewis nodded agreement. 'Let me say as the one who started all this I'm glad about your intentions for Edwina.'
'All right,' his wife said firmly, 'and I thank you too, Alex. But that's enough. Let's leave it there.' They did.
Margot told them about a legal class action she had brought against a department store which had been systematically cheating charge-account customers. The printed totals on monthly bills, Margot explained, were always a few dollars larger than they should have been. If anyone complained, the difference was explained away as an error, but hardly anyone did. 'When people see a machine printed total they assume it has to be right. What they forget, or don't know, is that machines can be programmed to include an error. In this case, one was.' Margot added that the store had, profited by tens of thousands of dollars, as she intended to prove in court.
'We don't program errors at the bank,' Edwina said, 'but they happen, machines or not. It's why I urge people to check their statements.'
In her department store investigation, Margot told the others, she had been helped by a private detective named Vernon Jax. He had been diligent and resourceful. She was strong in her praise of him.
'I know of him,' Lewis D'Orsey said. 'He's done investigation work for the SEC something I put them on to once. A good man.'
As they left the dining room, Lewis said to Alex, 'Let's get liberated. How about joining me for a cigar and cognac? We'll go to my study. Edwina doesn't like cigar smoke.'
Excusing themselves, the men went one floor down the D'Orseys' penthouse occupied two levels to Lewis's sanctum sanctorum. Inside, Alex looked around curiously.
The room was spacious, with bookcases on two sides and, on another, racks for magazines and newspapers. The shelves and racks were overflowing. There were three desks, one with an electric typewriter, and all with papers, books, and files piled high. 'When one desk becomes impossible to work at,' Lewis explained, 'I simply move to the next.'
