“Let me talk to him,” Meredith said. She still thought she could bring him around. Charlie hadn't said anything that had hurt them yet, but he hadn't helped them much either.
“I'm not sure that's the right tack,” Cal said cautiously. Charlie's resentment of Meredith had not abated, and he didn't want to aggravate it any further. “Let's wait and see if he calms down, and can make the transition on his own. I really don't want to push him.” Cal had a lot of respect for him, and Charlie had been a friend of Cal's father.
“If he doesn't adjust his attitude,” Meredith warned, “your shareholders may not find him too charming.” She was still worried about it, as Cal was.
“Poor old Charlie,” Cal said, and they went on to other subjects. He showed her a number of reports, and they talked about some new ideas he was developing, and once again, she was impressed by how creative he was, and how far ahead in his thinking. It was an important part of why he was so successful. And at five thirty he looked up at her, as he sat back comfortably in his chair, and asked her a strange question. “Have you ever thought about leaving investment banking, Meredith?” She was extraordinarily good at it, he knew better than anyone, but she also had a profound interest in high-tech business. “You'd be good at the kind of thing I do, and you'd probably make a hell of a lot more money.”
“I do all right,” she said with a shy smile.
“You'd make more here,” Callan Dow said gently. “If you ever decide to make a change, I'd love to hear from you, Merrie. I hope you know that.”
“I'm very flattered. But I'm not going anywhere for the moment.” She and Steve were too tied into New York to think of going anywhere. He had a good job in the trauma unit, and she was married to Wall Street.
“That could be truer than you know,” Callan Dow said. “In an old-guard firm the size of yours, Meredith, how high can you go? You're already a partner, but there are a lot of very old, very solid, very well-entrenched senior partners. You're never going to run the place. They'd never let a woman do that, and you know it.”
“They might someday,” she said calmly. “Times are changing.”
“Times have already changed just about everywhere else. Things are a lot slower moving in investment banking. It's the last bastion of the gentlemen who used to run the world, and still do in some places. I think you've already carved a remarkable spot for yourself, particularly in dealing with high-tech companies for them. But the reality is they're still sending guys like Paul Black out to see clients with you. Those guys still have more power than you do. You do the work, and they get all the glory.” It was something she had thought herself for years, but she didn't want to admit it to him.
“You're a real rabble-rouser, aren't you, Mr. Dow?” She looked at him with a broad grin. “What do you want me to do? Go back and quit? They'd love that.”
“No, I guess I'm just shit-disturbing a little bit. When I see a good thing, I hate not having a piece of the action. We work well together, Meredith. We think alike in a lot of ways. I hate to waste that.”
She couldn't help agreeing with him, but they hadn't exactly wasted it either. “I wouldn't say we've been wasting time, would you?” They had put together a hell of a good IPO, working together.
“Of course not. I'm just already thinking about how much I'm going to hate it when our stint together is over. I may have to call you for advice every day. I'm already having withdrawals, thinking about it.”
She laughed at what he said. “I told you, you'll be sick to death of me by the time the road show is over. But you can always call me.”
“You'll probably be on the road with some other novice, whining and sniveling and needing you to hold his hand while you take his company public.”
“Not for a while anyway. I'm going to take it easy for a few weeks. Steve and I have hardly seen each other all summer.”
“I don't know how you do that,” he said admiringly. “Maybe that's how you've kept your marriage together for fourteen years. Maybe it works better if you don't see each other all the time,” although that hadn't been true for him, and he knew that.
“Steve says it's like being married to a flight attendant.”
“Not exactly,” Cal smiled at her, and seemed to relax at the end of a long week. He was looking forward to spending the weekend with his children before he left for Boston on Sunday. “How about an early dinner with my little monsters? I'll take you to the airport myself in time for the red-eye. You won't have to leave the house till eight thirty.”
Although she had agreed to meet them, she had resisted the offer of dinner earlier, but it seemed too awkward now to keep insisting she didn't want to impose on him, she enjoyed his company, and was curious about his children. “Are you sure they won't mind your dragging a stranger home from the office?”
“They'll survive it. They're used to businesswomen, like their mother. They don't pay much attention to what I do. At this point, all the girls are interested in is short skirts and makeup. And all Andy cares about is my Ferrari. I don't talk about work much with them.”
“That's probably just as well. They've got plenty of time for that later.”
“We just got back from Tahoe last weekend, and they started school yesterday. They were all complaining about it this morning.”
They walked out of his office together, and almost everyone else had gone home by then. His Ferrari was in the parking lot. He had driven Meredith down from San Francisco in it, her bags were still in the trunk, and as she got back in now, he put the top down.
“We're only five minutes from my house. It's nice to get a little air,” he said easily. It was at least fifteen degrees warmer in Palo Alto than it had been in the city. And Meredith enjoyed the brief ride with the top down.
They were chatting comfortably, as he pulled into a driveway with hedges on either side, and a gate opened automatically when he pressed a button on his visor. And once it opened, she saw a handsome stone house, with a large expanse of lawn to one side, several beautiful old trees, and a big swimming pool, with a bunch of children in it, and several others sitting on deck chairs wrapped in towels. And there was a nice-looking woman in her midthirties watching them, while a golden retriever stood next to a little boy and then ran after a ball he'd just thrown him. It was an idyllic scene, and in total contrast to his high-tech business life. This was the world he loved to come home to. Several of the kids waved as he drove in, and parked the car, and Meredith could see one of the girls watching her with interest.
“Hi, kids,” he shouted in their general direction, and walked across the lawn toward them. There were at least ten children there, and Meredith realized that some of them had to be friends, but as soon as they approached, it was easy to see which ones were Callan's. The two girls he had described to her, Mary Ellen and Julie, looked exactly like him, so much so that it was almost funny. And Andy looked like a miniature of his father. All three of them stared at her as though she had just arrived from another planet, as he introduced her.