“Far as I know, Tallis, they’re kosher. Or whatever WASPs have for that. The book on these guys is the SEC loves them, maybe not enough to be the mother of its children, but enough. I can’t see what problem they could be giving you.”
“Suppose something’s going on that they’re not catching?”
Suppressing the urge to scream “Al-vinnn?” Maxine gently inquires, “Which… would be…?”
“Ooh, I dunno… something weird about the disbursements after the last round? Considering the prime directive in this business is always be nice to your VCs?”
“And somebody at your company is being… mean to its?”
“The money is supposed to be earmarked for infrastructure, which since all that… second-quarter trouble last year has been going dirt cheap… Servers, miles of dark fiber, bandwidth there for the grabbing.” Seeming to ditz over the technical stuff. Or is it something else? Just a skip, like you get from a blemish on a disc, nothing you’d ordinarily notice. “I’m supposed to be the comptroller, but when I bring any of it up with Gabe, he gets evasive. I’m beginning to feel like the babe in the window.” Out with the lower lip.
“But… how do I put this tactfully… you and your husband have certainly had a grown-up chat, maybe even two, on this subject?”
A mischievous look, a hair toss. Shirley Temple should take notes. “Maybe. Would it be a problem if we didn’t?” Did she say “pwobwem”? “I mean…” An interesting half a beat. “Until I know something for sure, I figure why bother him?”
“Unless he’s in it up to his eyeballs himself, of course.”
A quick inhale, as if just occurring to her, “Well… suppose you, or a colleague you might recommend, could look into it?”
Aha. “I hate matrimonials. Tallis. Sooner or later a firearm comes out. And this here, I can smell it, could turn matrimonial faster than you can say, ‘But Ricky, it’s only a hat.’”
“I’d be very appreciative.”
“Uh huh, I’d still have to bring in your auditors.”
“Couldn’t you—” With the fingernail.
“It’s a professional thing.” Feeling all at once, in this obscenely overpriced interior, like so totally a sucker. Is Maxine slowing down? OK, maybe she can invoice this virtual bimbo any fee she wants to, the price of a high-ticket vacation far, far away, but not till later, deep in the winter months, as she relaxes on a tropical beach, will the rum concoction in her tall frosted glass suddenly curdle in her hand, as crashing in on her, too late, there arrives a freak wave of understanding.
Nothing in this fateful moment is what it seems. This woman here, despite her M.B.A., ordinarily a sure sign of idiocy, is playing you, smart-ass, and you need to be out of this place as quick as possible. A theatrically stressed glance at her G-shock Mini, “Whoa, lunch with a client, Smith & Wollensky, meat intake for the month, call you soon. If I see your mom, should I say hi?”
“‘Drop dead’ might be better.”
Not too graceful a retreat. Given Maxine’s lack of success, and the likelihood that Tallis’s coolness will continue, she is stuck with telling March the unedited truth. That’s assuming she can get a word in, because March, now under the impression that Maxine is some kind of guru in these matters, has begun another commencement speech, this time about Tallis.
A few years back, one bleak winter afternoon, on the way home from the Pioneer Market on Columbus, some faceless yuppie shoved past March saying “Excuse me,” which in New York translates to “Get the fuck outta my way,” and which turned out finally to be once too often. March dropped the bags she was carrying in the filthy slush on the street, gave them a good kick, and screamed as loud as she could, “I hate this miserable shithole of a city!” Nobody seemed to take notice, though the bags and their strewn contents were gone in seconds. The only reaction was from a passerby who paused to remark, “So? you don’t like it, why don’t you go live someplace else?”
“Interesting question,” she recalls to Maxine now, “though how long did I really need to think about it? Because Tallis is here, is why, there it begins and ends and what else is new.”
“With the two boys,” Maxine nods, “it’s different, but sometimes I’ll sit and fantasize, what it would’ve been like, a girl.”
“So? go have one, you’re still just a kid.”
“Yeah, problem is, so is Horst and everybody I’ve dated since.”
“Oh, you should have seen my ex. Sidney. Disturbed adolescents from around the country would show up on pilgrimages just to inhale his secondhand smoke and stay calibrated.”
“He’s still…”
“Still kicking. He ever passes, it’s gonna be such a rude surprise for him.”
“You’re in touch?”
“More than I would like, he lives out on the Canarsie line with some 12-year-old named Sequin.”
“He gets to sees Tallis?”
“I think there’s a restraining order dating back a couple years from when Sid started hanging around in the street under their window with a tenor sax and playing this old rock ’n’ roll she used to like, and of course Ice put the kibosh on that quick enough.”
“One tries not to wish anyone ill, but this Ice person, really…”
“She goes along with it. You never want to see kids repeat your own mistakes. So what happens, Tallis goes ahead just like me and marries the wrong promising entrepreneur. The worst you can say for Sid is he couldn’t handle the stress of being around me all the time. Ice on the other hand appreciates stress, the more the better, so naturally Tallis, my perverse child, goes out of her way not to give him any. And he pretends he loves it. He’s evil.”
“So,” carefully, “job title at hashslingrz and so forth aside, how duked in would you say she is?”
“On what? Company secrets? She’s not whistle-blower material, if that’s what you’re hoping.”
“Not disgruntled enough, you mean.”
“She could be going around in a fit of rage 24/7, what difference would it make? Their prenup has more riders on it than the subway. Ice fucking owns her.”
“I was only there for maybe an hour, but I got this feeling. Like an agenda she may not be sharing with the wunderkind.”
“Like what?” A hopeful gleam. “A person.”
“We were only talking fraud… but… you think there could be a BF in the picture also?”
“Certain chapters of history would suggest. Tell you, frankly, it wouldn’t break her mother’s heart.”
“Wish I had better news for you.”
“So I’ll go on taking what I can get, my grandson Kennedy, I’ve got a graft in with the baby-sitter, Ofelia, she finds us a minute or two alone now and then. What else can I do but keep an eye on him, make sure they don’t fuck him up too bad.” Looks at her watch. “You got a minute?”
They proceed to the corner of 78th and Broadway. “Please don’t tell anybody.”
“We’re waiting for your dealer, what?”
“For Kennedy. They’re sending him to Collegiate. Where fuckin else. They want him seamlessly programmed on into Harvard, law school, Wall Street, the usual Manhattan death march. Well. Not if his grandma can help it.”
“I bet he’s crazy about you. Supposed to be the second-strongest human bond there is.”
“Sure, ’cause you both hate the same people.”
“Ooh.”
“OK, maybe exaggerating, I do hate Tallis of course, but I also love her now and then.”
Down the block in front of the ruling-class polytechnic, small boys in shirts and ties have begun to mill around. Maxine spots Kennedy right away, you don’t have to be clairvoyant. Blond, curly-headed, an apprentice heartbreaker, he backs gracefully away from a knot of boys, waves, turns and comes at a dead run up the block and into March’s embrace.