‘Lenka, a word,’ Abby said, taking her by the arm.
Abby murmured something to her that Chris and Duncan couldn’t quite hear. But they could hear Lenka’s response: ‘My clothes are inappropriate! What do you mean, they’re inappropriate?’
Abby glanced at Chris and Duncan. ‘I feel you ought to know that it’s just not appropriate to wear pants at Bloomfield Weiss,’ she said.
Lenka snorted. ‘That’s absurd! Look at Chris and Duncan. They’re wearing pants. Most of the people on the training programme wear pants. Sidney Stahl, our Chairman, wears pants. Why shouldn’t I?’
‘You know what I mean,’ said Abby. Her face had turned red, but having gone this far she wasn’t about to back down. ‘It’s inappropriate for women to wear pants.’
‘So it’s OK for men, but not for women, is that it? And whose idea is that? I bet it was a woman’s.’
‘I don’t know whose idea it was,’ said Abby. ‘But women just don’t wear pants around here.’
‘Well, they do now,’ said Lenka, and marched off into the classroom.
During the break she joined Chris and the others at the coffee machine. ‘I can’t believe that woman,’ she said. ‘And did you see the suit she was wearing, and that horrible little ruffled blouse. That should be banned.’
‘You know she was one of us last year,’ said Alex.
‘What do you mean?’
‘She was a trainee, just like us. Apparently, she didn’t do too well. She couldn’t get an assignment after the programme so she ended up as programme coordinator. The theory is that she has to prove herself to George Calhoun to escape from here and get a proper job.’
‘Oh, God,’ groaned Duncan. ‘What if that happened to me? I couldn’t face it.’
They were all silent for a moment, thinking of the fate that would befall those among them who didn’t make it out of the bottom quartile.
‘It’s OK for most of these guys,’ said Alex. ‘They’ve all got MBAs; they’ve done a lot of this stuff before. But I’ve got to admit I’m finding it pretty tough.’
‘You’re telling me,’ said Duncan.
‘There’s just so much of it,’ said Chris, glad that Alex had admitted what he hadn’t been prepared to. ‘I mean, the second you understand one concept, they throw another two at you.’
‘Look, do you guys want to come back with us this evening? Maybe if we help each other out we can crack this.’ Alex glanced at Eric who nodded his encouragement.
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Chris.
‘I’m up for it,’ said Duncan.
‘So am I,’ said Ian.
‘Do you allow in women wearing pants?’ asked Lenka.
‘Not usually,’ said Alex. ‘But in your case, we can make an exception.’
Eric and Alex’s apartment was a long way up the West Side. It was large, but in bad repair. Apparently it was rent-controlled, and therefore not in the landlord’s interests to look after. The furniture was basic and there was plenty of student clutter about the place. But what struck them all as they entered were the walls.
Four or five large canvases hung about the room, each one depicting petrochemical plants or oil refineries at different times of day and night. Pipes, gantries, cylinders, towers and chimneys were displayed at odd angles, forming intricate geometric networks. Orange glows, bright red flares and piercing white halogen lights added to the mystery of the massive chemical processes taking place within. The overall effects were unexpectedly beautiful.
‘These are amazing,’ said Lenka. ‘Who did them?’
‘I did,’ said Alex.
‘You?’ Lenka turned to him, her reappraisal obvious. ‘I didn’t realize you were a painter.’
‘I spent a couple of years after college trying to make it as a professional artist. I had a couple of exhibitions, sold some paintings, but I could barely make enough to live on. I didn’t like the idea of a life of poverty. So here I am.’
‘That’s a shame,’ Lenka said.
Alex shrugged. ‘That’s why we’re all here, aren’t we?’ There was a defensive edge to his voice: Lenka had obviously touched on a sore point.
‘I’m sorry, I guess you’re right. But it’s an odd subject. Why these?’
‘I come from New Jersey,’ said Alex. ‘We have a lot of oil refineries. When I was a kid I used to stare out of the car window at them as we drove by. I was fascinated. Then later, at college, I thought, why not paint them? It became a kind of obsession.’
‘They’re stunning,’ Lenka said. She moved round the room. ‘Don’t tell me this is New Jersey?’
She was standing in front of a dramatic picture of an installation rising out of the sand, throwing its flare into a wide desert sky. The contrast of the hostile rugged terrain with the dramatically engineered structures, and the variations in the natural and man-made light, produced an effect that was startling in its beauty.
‘That’s the Industrial City of Jubail in Saudi Arabia,’ Alex said. ‘A chemical company saw my work and sponsored me to go over there. I sold every painting I did there, apart from this one.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Lenka.
‘I wish I’d kept more of them.’
‘In the meantime, I feel like I’m living in a goddamn factory,’ said Eric. ‘What’s wrong with sunflowers, for Christ’s sake?’
‘Bourgeois philistine,’ muttered Alex.
‘I like them,’ said Duncan. ‘Have you ever painted a brewery?’
‘Not yet,’ said Alex. ‘But I take it that means you’d like a beer?’
‘I thought you’d never ask.’
So that evening, and several evenings a week over the following months, the six of them studied together, usually meeting at Eric and Alex’s apartment. It quickly became clear who knew how much. Eric seemed to take in everything that was thrown at him, and to understand it instantly. For Duncan, it was all a struggle. Alex and Chris got there in the end, Chris with more work than Alex. Ian acted as though he understood everything, and indeed he was quick to grasp the principles. But when it came to the nitty-gritty of number work, he was hopeless. This was a secret he somehow managed to keep from everyone in the class outside the study group, who did their best to cover for him. Lenka seemed to have almost as good an understanding as Eric, although she had a tendency to throw in off-the-wall solutions to what seemed to the rest of them to be simple problems. The group helped each other out and, with the exception of Duncan on that third day, they got by.
Alex wasn’t alone among the trainees in having an unusual background. While there were a number of white male Anglo-Saxon MBAs, Bloomfield Weiss was careful not to recruit exclusively from that pool. There were women as well as men, Indians, Africans and Japanese. Quite a few were about Chris’s age, twenty-two, but most were a couple of years older: some were in their thirties. Amongst the Americans was a professional gambler, a woman who had started and sold her own mail-order business in designer computer accessories, and a professional football player with a limp. Amongst the foreigners was an ex-submariner from the French navy, a super-cool Japanese man who liked to be called Tex and wore his shades at every opportunity, a Saudi who knew he was unsackable and hence did nothing, and an older Italian woman who struggled to understand the English spoken rapidly around her, and did her best to keep up with the course while looking after her three-year-old daughter.
Everyone was treated equally, whatever their background, everyone except for Latasha James, the black American woman who sat next to Chris. Professors, even Waldern, were careful to deal with her with respect and politeness at all times. This drove Latasha crazy. The firm wanted to place her in the Municipal Finance department, where she could sell Bloomfield Weiss to black civic leaders. She just wanted to be treated like everyone else.