Fatal Reaction Page 13

  “Unless you were someone well known.”

  “You mean a celebrity?”

  “Yes, but not necessarily in the way you’re probably thinking. It could be anybody the paramedics might recognize, anyone who could be hurt by that kind of whispering—a politician, a newscaster, a judge, someone prominent and recognizable—anybody who would have reason to be afraid that one of the paramedics would sell the story to the tabloids.”

  “That narrows it down some....” I mused.

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” replied Stephen in frustration. “This is a big town and I don’t think there’s any shortage of people leading secret lives.”

  Eventually we had no choice but to turn the conversation to Takisawa.

  “I spent a long time in the firm’s library last night,” I said as we began laying out various sections of the burgeoning Takisawa file on the long table Stephen used for meetings. “I was reading up on negotiating with the Japanese.”

  “Did you learn anything?”

  “Just enough to understand the extent of my ignorance, which is frankly pretty vast. Enough to know that I am definitely the wrong person to be doing this. It’s going to be bad enough that Takisawa is going to have to deal with a new face, but I’m exactly the kind of face you don’t want sitting next to you at the negotiating table. I’m serious, Stephen. I want you to think seriously about bringing in someone else, someone with greater experience in dealing with the Japanese.”

  “You mean a man.”

  “As much as it hurts me to say it, yes. You need a man. A man with experience in negotiating with the Japanese. This is going to be hairy enough without my gender complicating things further.”

  “And I think it’s already so complicated that you could be a green Martian and it wouldn’t matter. Do you really think that after they’ve had a look at Lou Remminger they’re going to give a damn about you?”

  “That’s the reason you need an experienced male negotiator, to help balance that out. You can’t make a deal without Lou Remminger, though somebody has got to talk to her about her clothes. As unpalatable as she may be to the Japanese, she’s the key to what you’re trying to do with ZK-501. I’m the least important variable in this equation.”

  “I think you’re wrong. It’s true that it’s going to make them nervous that we’re changing people in midnegotiation. After all, most Japanese businessmen work for the same company for their entire lives. They find the kind of movement that takes place in American business completely incomprehensible. But Danny didn’t leave to work for a competitor. Surely death is understandable in every culture. If you take Danny’s place, then at least it’s an orderly progression. As a member of the board and chief outside counsel, you rank above Danny in the hierarchy. It is logical that you would step in to take his place. I guarantee Takisawa will have done their homework. They will know that you and I have a relationship outside of the office and the fact that you have my ear both professionally and privately will give you greater credibility than any negotiator I could ever bring in from the outside.”

  “That may be, but I still don’t have enough experience dealing with the Japanese. No matter what you say, I’ll be flying blind.”

  “You’re not just the toughest negotiator I know, Kate, but you’re also the most intuitive. You’ll figure out how to deal with Takisawa,” Stephen reassured me. “Now, tell me, have you had a chance to speak to your mother about using her house for dinner on the first night?”

  “I took her out to lunch today,” I reported. I could tell by the look on Stephen’s face that he was impressed. “Not only has she agreed to personally act as hostess for the dinner, but she has agreed to take charge of all the arrangements for the entire visit—hotel, meals, transportation, everything. It turns out that the husband of one of her good friends was ambassador to Japan under Reagan, so she’s got the inside track on everything we’re going to need to do. You’ve been to my mother’s parties. Everything will be perfect.”

  “I can’t believe you got her to agree to do all that. Are we going to have to pay her anything?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She doesn’t want any money from you—indeed, she’d be insulted if you offered. But if it comes down to a choice between putting up cheap wallpaper and the one my mother likes, we’ll be putting up the one my mother likes.”

  “Fair enough,” replied Stephen, thereby demonstrating his complete ignorance of what hand-painted French wallpaper could cost. “But I still can’t believe she’d take on all of this. This is going to take a lot of time. No offense, but your mother has never struck me as someone who’s itching to roll up her sleeves and work at something.”

  “You don’t understand,” I replied. “To mother, this isn’t work. This is throwing an elaborate party for some people she doesn’t particularly like. She does that all the time. Besides, that’s not why she said yes.”

  “Then tell me. Why did she?”

  “Because she knows there is no way I am ever going to compete with her in her world.”

  “So?”

  “So this is Mother’s chance to show me that while I can’t play on her court, she can sure as hell beat me on mine.”

  Driving back into the city, I cursed the suburban hordes who were already clotting the expressway as they made their way into the city for Saturday night. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the MCA dinner were only a law firm function. After all, my partners were used to my pared-down—my mother would call it frumpy— style. The trouble was that my parents were going to be there, too, and even though I had been in my mother’s debt only since lunch, I already felt the pressure to pay her back.

  As a result I found myself, twenty minutes before Stephen was supposed to pick me up, standing in front of my bedroom mirror in my underwear fumbling with a set of electric rollers that I hadn’t used since college. The worst part was I kept getting their little spines tangled in my hair, and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how the weird metal clips were supposed to attach to my hair. Claudia wandered in in midepithet and took a seat on the corner of my bed, looking vastly amused.

  “If I ever fall off a ladder or bum myself or get electrocuted while we’re alone together in the apartment,” she said, “please do me a favor and don’t give me first aid.”

  “Why not?” I asked, wishing desperately that I either had longer arms or eyes in the back of my head.

  “Because I would be terrified to have you touch me,” replied my roommate, ever the surgeon. “It’s remarkable what a klutz you are.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  “Do you want some help with that?”

  “No thank you.”

  “Come on. I’m afraid you’re going to hurt yourself.”

  “What do you know about electric curlers?” I shot back. Claudia’s parents were sixties radicals who to this day lived from one protest march to the next. When I first met her she hadn’t even seen a tube of mascara before.

  “If I can sew two ends of a severed blood vessel together, I can put rollers in your hair. Now, come over here and sit down. What did they feed you growing up to get you this tall?”

  “I’m only five eleven. Just think of how much taller I’d be if I’d actually received maternal love as a child.”

  “I take it your mother’s going to be wherever you’re going, otherwise you wouldn’t be torturing yourself like this. What disease is it tonight? Muscular dystrophy? Cancer?”

  “Modem art. It’s the Benefactors’ Dinner for the new Museum of Contemporary Art.”

  Claudia responded by making snoring noises.

  “So what are you doing tonight?” I asked.

  “Packing. I’ve got an interview at Stanford on Monday for their fellowship program.”

  “Eye surgery?”

  “Surgery.”

  “I can’t see you in California.”

  “I can’t see you in an evening gown, but that do
esn’t mean you’re not going to put one on.” She eyed my dress that was hanging from the top of my closet door. “Is that what you’re going to wear?” she asked, rolling up the last section of hair.

  “Yeah.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “Sure. How long am I supposed to keep these things in for? My head is starting to get hot,” I complained.

  “Just be quiet and put your makeup on,” she said, climbing up on a chair to take down the dress. It was a deep copper color and the fabric had a dull metallic sheen to it, not enough to be shiny, but enough to catch the light when the fabric moved. It was off the shoulder with a set-in waist and a full skirt, much more dramatic than what I usually wear.

  “It’s gorgeous,” sighed my roommate, “but you didn’t buy this, did you?”

  “No, Mother ordered it for me when she was in Paris for the couture shows.”

  “How much does something like this cost?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” I said, concentrating on my mascara.

  “Ballpark?”

  “It’s better if you don’t know. I don’t want you throwing up right before you leave for your trip.”

  “I know it won’t fit me, but could I try it on?”

  I turned and looked at my roommate in surprise. “Of course.”

  Claudia quickly stripped out of her scrubs and kicked off her running shoes.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever worn a long dress,” she confided, slipping it off its hanger and holding it up to herself in front of the mirror. “That is, if you don’t count the times I wrapped an old tablecloth around my waist to play princess when I was little. It used to make my mother furious.” She undid the zipper and stepped into it.

  “Here,” I said, setting down my lipstick and turning to help her. “Let me zip you up.”

  The dress was so long it pooled around her ankles. I grabbed my evening pumps from the floor of my closet. “Put these on,” I instructed. Claudia slipped her tiny feet into my shoes. They were so big, she looked like a little girl playing dress-up. I stepped behind her and pulled the extra material back so that the dress appeared to fit smoothly in front.

  Claudia took her glasses off, revealing dark circles from hours spent in the OR, and squinted at her image in the mirror. “I feel just like Cinderella,” she announced.

  “Believe me,” I informed her sagely from over her shoulder. “Four hours in those shoes and you’ll feel like a tired old cleaning lady with arthritis waiting at the bus stop.”

  A city like Chicago erects a new museum perhaps only once a generation. As Stephen and I pulled up to the new Museum of Contemporary Art I felt fairly certain our grandchildren would someday stand on this very spot and wonder what on earth we must have been thinking. From the street it looked like something out of a scary Bauhaus dream. Everything about the building was hard and forbidding, from the mountain of knife-edged stairs leading up to the second-story entrance, to the cast-aluminum panels that covered the building like high-tech graham crackers.

  Even though the building had been lit up for the evening’s festivities and a red carpet laid down like a slash against the sharp limestone steps, I still felt like I was about to pay a visit to Dr. No. The building seemed as welcoming as a twenty-first-century jail—a feeling that was only reinforced by the phalanx of black-clad security guards with arms clasped behind their backs and black earpieces plugged into their ears. They looked like extras in a futuristic thriller.

  It was, I noted as we passed through the doors, not your usual benefit crowd. Besides the smattering of the old guard who’d turned out for Skip’s wife, and the lawyers from Callahan Ross and their sullen wives, it was definitely an arty group. There were lots of grayhaired men sporting ponytails, no doubt telling themselves that their black collarless shirts not only made them look younger but were slimming as well. Their wives wore hand-painted dresses and looked like they patronized the same hairdresser as Lou Remminger.

  We waited for our names to be checked off from the list and then passed into a tall, narrow room, which looked like the interior of a very large, white shoe box. In the center of it stood an enormous golden sphere about twelve feet in diameter. The wall plaque announced that the piece was titled, Monument to Language.

  I turned to Stephen. “I need a drink,” I said.

  I spotted my parents on the far side of the room, talking to the mayor, who I decided looked more like his father every day. Tribute having been paid, the mayor moved on. Most of the $46 million that it had cost to erect the new building had been donated by the people in this room. His honor had many more hands to shake before the night was through.

  Stephen reappeared at my side with two glasses of white wine and thus armed we made our way through the black-clad crowd toward my parents, who were having their picture taken by the photographer for the society page. The Sun-Times society columnist hovered malevolently in the background waiting for him to finish.

  As we made our way toward them we stopped every few feet to shake hands and say hello. I couldn’t help but marvel at Stephen. With his most trusted business advisor dead, control of his company threatening to weaken, and the deal of his lifetime looming ever closer on the horizon, he amiably worked the cocktail crowd, effortlessly remembering names and lightheartedly flirting with my mother’s friends and my partners’ wives. I’d long ago concluded, albeit enviously, that it was a masculine talent, this ability to compartmentalize, to focus completely on what was at hand.

  We finally reached my parents. Mother was radiant and in her element, stunning in a Halston gown of midnight blue. Even though she managed to convey the impression that somehow the party was being given in her honor, the truth is she wouldn’t have entertained in a woodshed most of the people who were gathered here. But as an icon of arts philanthropy in this city, she felt it necessary to make an appearance at the event. She wasn’t even staying for dinner. After cocktails she and my father were headed to the cystic fibrosis benefit at the Four Seasons. Catching sight of us, Mother greeted me with more warmth than I’d seen her muster of late, while Father, in his usual semiinebriated state, was as sweet, and vague, as ever.

  “That dress looks lovely on you,” she said, congratulating herself on her choice.

  “Thank you.”

  “Have you said hello to Skip and Bitsy yet?”

  “Yes, Mother,” I replied, wondering how it was that she always managed to make me feel like I was exactly nine years old. “It was the very first thing we did.”

  “Very good,” she said.

  “Well then, let’s have a look around this joint,” suggested my father, adding under his breath, “it’s not like we’re ever going to be coming back.”

  Stephen chuckled and my father flagged down a waiter to bring him a fresh drink. Once my father had enough gin and tonic in hand to safely make the trip, we made our way into the closest of the museum’s barrel-vaulted galleries.

  A sign beside the entry explained that the gallery housed a show whose intention was to demonstrate how the concept of rapture transforms lives and is expressed through modem art. After looking at the first couple of paintings I was secretly grateful they hadn’t chosen depression as a theme. Whoever thought that several large, black panels communicated anything about rapture was completely out of their mind.

  I went to say something to Stephen, but he was reading the explanatory text beside one of the installations with such great concentration that I stepped back to look at it myself.

  It was a large painting, eight feet by six feet, painted white and superimposed with a thinly lined grid of pale red squares. I didn’t bother reading the description. They were all so pretentious and absurd that they only reinforced my deep-seated belief that much of modem art is to our century what the new clothes were to the emperor— nothing but a very elaborate fraud.

  “What do you think?” demanded Stephen, appearing at my side. “Shall we buy it and hang it in our new living room?”

  “Thank g
od they’re not for sale,” I replied. I studied his face and was alarmed to find no trace of a smile.

  “It must have been hard to get all those thin lines perfectly straight using a brush.”

  “I wouldn’t care if you told me it was painted by an armless Buddhist monk holding a toothpick in his teeth using his own blood. It still looks exactly like a big sheet of graph paper.”

  The lights flickered, signaling dinner. We took our leave of my parents, who would wait until the majority of the guests were seated before slipping out to their next function. Stephen and I made our way up the stairs to where tables had been set up in the galleries housing the museum’s permanent collection. Ours was beneath a series of Calder mobiles from the thirties that I recognized from art history class. I wondered whether that made them too old to be classified as contemporary, but I was so grateful that they’d decorated the tables with flowers instead of something more avant-garde that I didn’t feel inclined to quibble.

  I took my seat beside a partner from corporate whom I barely knew. His wife, plump and pretty, seemed flustered to find herself seated beside Stephen, who immediately applied himself to the task of charming her. My other dinner companion had not yet arrived. I thought nothing of it until, turning my head to tell the waiter that I wanted wine, I chanced to glance at the place card, partially obscured by flowers. I must have said something, or at least drawn back in shock, because Stephen turned to me, a look of concern on his face.

  Memory flooded back. A heated discussion about art over lunch at the Standard Club nearly three months ago. Danny raving about the work of Dorothea Lange, a famous realist photographer whose work was scheduled for an exhibition during the coming year. A note jotted down and cast from memory as soon as it was handed to Cheryl. Until that moment I had completely forgotten I’d invited Danny to join us at the benefit that evening.