9

In her apartment at 200 East 66th Street, Nonie Myerson and Roger Williams are in her bedroom, with the curtains drawn, where they have just made love. Roger has shifted his weight to one side and has lighted a cigarette. Normally, Nonie does not allow anyone to smoke in her apartment, but of course Roger is an exception.

Making love is perhaps the wrong term, because love had very little to do with it. Nonie considers herself a sensible woman, a realistic woman, and is cynical enough to know the difference between a sexual act and love. The sexual act is a glandular function, and love is—well, love is something Nonie has learned to distrust over the years; it has betrayed her too often. Many men have made love to Nonie Myerson and some of them have said they were in love with her, and a few of these she has thought she loved. But this is quite different. She does not love Roger, and Roger does not love her. What they have performed together is more like a business handshake, a quid pro quo. He makes love to her (What else to call it? Every other term that comes to mind is vulgar.) because he assumes she expects him to, and she lets him because she knows that is what he assumes. That is all. Oh, she admits that she finds him attractive. He is good-looking in a hard-boiled sort of way, lean and well-built, with chiseled pectorals, tight buttocks, and long, splendidly muscled legs. What older woman wouldn’t be delighted to be taken to bed by a virile, youthful specimen like that? And, to be sure, when they are making love, he whispers husky comments to her such as “You’re terrific.… You’re so beautiful.…” But Nonie is not fool enough to be taken in by any of that. That does not add up to love. No, each wants the other for different reasons. She wants him for his demonstrable ability—by making a call to Zurich, then to Chicago, in quick succession—to make eight thousand dollars a minute. He is her golden opportunity to get back into the business world, where she belongs, because business is in her blood, inherited, no doubt, from her father. And Roger wants her because, let’s face it—Nonie most certainly does—she is a Myerson, and a likely avenue to the kind of money he needs to put his talents to work. The sex is incidental, just a way of demonstrating that they trust each other, want to work together, that each wants something that the other has; a pleasant prelude to exploring more serious possibilities, a handshake.

This afternoon, of course, she could tell that his heart wasn’t really in it. His performance was halfhearted, even listless, and she is sure he didn’t come, only pretended to. And this, no doubt, is because she had been unable to bring him any good news. He lies beside her on the bed, naked under the single sheet, his erection gone, the cigarette drooping from between his lips. She touches his shoulder with a fingertip to reassure him and says, “That was lovely, darling.”

He swings his bare legs over the side of the bed and sits there for a moment, shaping his ash on the edge of an ashtray. Then he says, “Let’s face it, Nonie. This isn’t working out.”

She sits up as well. “What do you mean?” she says. “What isn’t working out?”

“It doesn’t look as though we’re going to get any money out of your mother.”

“Just be patient, darling! These things take time. I’ve got a few more aces up my sleeve. I know how to work on her.”

“I don’t like the way things are going.”

“She’s always come through before! It just takes time.”

“What if she’s telling the truth? What if she just doesn’t have the money?”

“How could she not have the money? She got trust funds from each one of her Guggenheim uncles, as well as from her father, and she had seven uncles! Daddy … dipped into them a bit before he died, but Mimi reestablished them for her. She got nearly a third of Daddy’s Miray shares, and think what they must be worth now! She’s loaded, Roger; she’s the richest Myerson of us all, except perhaps for Mimi.”

“And Mimi is—I mean, I suppose there’s no point in trying to approach Mimi?”

She hesitates. “The truth,” she says, “is that Mimi’s never liked me.”

“Why not?”

“It’s because of her mother, because of Alice. Alice has always been such a … difficult woman. None of the family could ever get along with her. Alice is an alcoholic, and she was always coming around, hat in hand, begging for money from everyone—from Mother, from Edwee, from me. Don’t ask me why. Daddy paid Henry a good salary, but he and Alice never seemed to have any money. Because of her drinking, I suppose. She’d trot little Mimi around—literally, from door to door—talking about how poor they all were, asking for money. It got so we’d all practically run and hide when we saw Alice coming, with her little girl in tow! Mimi grew up resenting us. It’s not that Mother and Daddy weren’t generous with them. Why, they bought presents for Mimi that were nicer—nicer than anything they ever gave to me! Alice just couldn’t seem to handle money. But Mimi’s very protective of her mother, and she’s well taken care of now.”

He is shaking his head back and forth.

She leans back against the pillows. “Isn’t it ironic?” she says.

“Isn’t what ironic?”

“If I’d taken over the company after Henry died, I could have been where Mimi is now—in the driver’s seat!”

“Yeah. Well, you didn’t, and this whole thing isn’t working out, Nonie.”

“It will! Just give me a few more days, Roger, to work on Mother. Let me work on this nursing home thing. She’s terrified of going into a nursing home, and if I can make her think—”

He is still shaking his head. “This is no way to get a business started, with a lot of goddam threats, with a blackmail—”

“Who’s threatening? I’m just saying—”

“You told me that getting the backing from your mother would be a piece of cake, Nonie. It’s turning out to be a goddam can of worms. I’m going to start looking for a new financial partner.”

“You can’t!” she cries in a panic. “You can’t do that! I’m your financial partner!”

“Yeah, well, where’s the financing? Look, I need to get this thing off the ground. I can’t sit around, day after day, twiddling my thumbs, waiting for you to—”

“Just a few more days. Give me through the weekend. Give me till Monday. I’ll have it by then, I promise.”

He sits there, with his back to her, still shaking his head.

He can’t, she thinks. He can’t back out now; they’ve only just begun. She still knows too little about him. He is terribly difficult to reach. All she has for him is an unpublished telephone number, which he has cautioned her to give out to no one, and when she calls this number it is invariably answered by a disembodied male voice, not even his own, on a machine that says, “You have reached five-five-five-one-eight-eight-oh. If you wish to leave a message …” She has not been to his house, doesn’t even know where he lives, though the telephone prefix indicates it is somewhere in lower Manhattan. Why this secrecy? He has hinted that it has something to do with an old girlfriend who has been bothering him. She does not know whether he is married or not, though he wears no wedding band. He has been very unforthcoming with details about his past, his childhood, his education, his family, though she has told him everything about hers. All she knows about him is that she met him three weeks ago at a cocktail party, that they happened to leave at the same time, that it was raining, that he suggested they share a cab and he would drop her off, that she asked him up for a nightcap, that he told her he was a foreign currency trader, temporarily between jobs, looking for backing for a new venture, and then one thing led to another, and here they are.

He stands up, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Sorry,” he says, “but it’s no go. I’m going to find another partner.”

“You can’t!” she screams. And then, “You mean you’re going out to look for another rich woman, who’ll let you fuck her, who’ll try to help you the way I’ve been trying. And then if she doesn’t help you just like that, you’ll walk out on her? Well, you can’t do that to me, you gigolo bastard! I’m not going to let you do that to me, you gigolo bastard, because you and I have an agreement. We agreed to be partners in this, full partners, fifty-fifty. We have a contract!”

With his back to her, he bends forward slightly, spreads his cheeks with his fingertips, and farts. “So much for your contract,” he says. Then he walks into the bathroom, and a moment later, she hears the shower running.

“He was very—evasive,” Mimi says to Badger. “That’s the only word I can think of to describe it. Evasive. He kept trying to change the subject. He kept trying to play dumb. ‘Is that how much of your stock I own? Golly!’ He’s very clever. I don’t trust him, Badger. I genuinely think he’s after us. In fact, I’m positive he is.”

He nudges his chair closer to her desk and rests his shirt-sleeved elbows on her desktop. “I’ve been thinking about this,” he says, “and I think I’ve come up with a plan that could stop him in his tracks.”

“What is it, Badger?”

“Privatization.”

“You mean—?”

“Exactly. We go private. We become a private company again.”

“But we have thousands of stockholders, Badger.”

“There are two ways of doing it,” he says. “The first would be for the family to offer to buy back the stock from individual stockholders—at an attractive price, of course, that would have to be somewhat higher than the market. I don’t need to say that this would cost us a lot of money. But there’s another way, besides a buyback, that would be much simpler … and cheaper.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“Telescope the stock. I’m talking about a reverse split. It’s not unheard-of. Instead of buying back publicly owned shares, we’d convert them. Every one thousand shares of old stock, for instance, would be converted into one new share. Holders of less than a thousand shares would be paid in cash for their holdings—again, at an attractive price. Right now, individual members of the family own, collectively, about thirty percent of our stock. Various family trusts vote another ten percent. That leaves sixty percent, more or less, in public hands. But remember that a lot of our stock is owned by people who own just one or two hundred shares, or odd lots. With these small shareholders bought out, the family would be majority owners of the company, and nobody could touch us. Also, a reverse split would bring the number of stockholders to under three hundred people, and you know what that means.”

“The SEC …”

“Exactly. A company with less than three hundred stockholders is not subject to SEC regulations. The company would be deregistered. Do you realize how much money that would save us annually? Hundreds of thousands saved each year, by not having to report to the SEC, and not having to comply with the regulatory requirements of being a public company.”

“I see what you mean,” his mother says carefully.

“So several things would be accomplished all at once. The family would control the company, with no regulatory agency hanging over its shoulder telling us what to do. The company’s management decisions would be simplified by not having to defer to a lot of different outside stockholder interests. With a larger share of the company in our hands, we could find ourselves a good deal richer. Also, if at some future time we decided to sell this company, we could name our price. And, finally, Mr. Michael Horowitz, with his lousy four-plus percent of the stock, would find himself out in the cold, wondering what hit him.”

“Byzantine,” she says. “Byzantine, the way your mind works, Badger.”

Badger sits back in his chair, looking pleased with himself. “Thanks, Mom,” he says.

“Of course a reverse split would have to be approved by a majority of stockholders. Which may not be easy.”

“But which may not be that hard, either. How many small stockholders even read that proxy material they get in the mail? Most of those proxies go straight in the wastebasket.”

“But a failure to vote is counted as a vote against the proposal.”

“I’ve thought of that, too. It’s all a question of how the proxy is worded. If it’s worded as a vote against privatization, those who don’t vote could push our plan through. Meanwhile, the holders who have large blocks of shares have nothing to lose, either way. Whichever way the company goes, the dollar amounts of their investment stay the same. In fact, we may be able to persuade some of these large shareholders that they have a lot to gain from a negative vote.”

“And Mr. Michael Horowitz? I have a feeling he reads his proxies very carefully.”

He smiles. “That,” he says, “is when the fun will start. That’s when things may begin to heat up a bit. That’s when we’ll see what his true colors are—if he starts trying to line up other stockholders against our plan. That’s when we’ll see if this is going to be a little scuffle, or an all-out war.”

“It’s going to cost us money, isn’t it.”

He spreads his hands. “Sure. Some. But worth it, maybe?”

“How much? How much exactly?”

“Look,” he says, “I haven’t done a feasibility study on this, you know. I’m just suggesting this as an idea—an idea that would make it impossible for anybody to take us over. Horowitz, or anybody else. An idea whose time has maybe come. You see, this is what I think. I think that when you took this company public back in nineteen sixty-two, it was a brilliant move—at the time. You saved us from what looked like certain bankruptcy. But this isn’t ’sixty-two, it’s ’eighty-seven—the age of the takeover. Privatization could be a second brilliant move, in light of what’s happening to companies like ours today. Look at Revlon, Germaine Monteil, and Charles of the Ritz—all bought by Ron Perelman in the last two years. Look at Giorgio, bought by Avon. As far as financing goes, we could get it. We’d have no trouble finding somebody on Wall Street who’d underwrite us. Who were the underwriters in ’sixty-two?”

“Goldman, Sachs.”

“Hit some of those boys again!”

“All right,” she says. “Let’s go ahead. Let’s do a feasibility study. Find out how many major stockholders are involved. Find out how many small shareholders we’d need to buy out. Find out how much it will cost. Sound out an underwriter. Find out—”

“Okay, but there are two things we’ve got to agree on before I even leave this room.”

“What’s that?”

“First, this has got to be kept absolutely confidential—between you and me, period. If word hit the street that we’re even thinking of such a move, our stock would go crazy. No one should even know that you and I have had this conversation. I mean, for the time being I wouldn’t even tell Dad.”

“I agree.”

“And, second, every family shareholder, at some point down the line, must be in unanimous agreement with the plan, if we’re going to pull it off at all. Every family shareholder.”

“Including the Leo cousins, you mean.”

“Exactly. Those mysterious Leo cousins none of us has ever met. We’re going to need to get them on our team.”

She sighs. “The damned Leo cousins, who’ve been taught from the time they were in diapers that I run a kind of evil empire. That anything the Adolph Myerson branch of the family wants to do has got to be to their disadvantage. That if we’re for it, they’re against it. That’s going to be a tough one, Badger.”

“The Leo cousins are going to have to be reintroduced to their Adolph cousins. Someone’s going to have to raise a white flag. They’re going to have to be persuaded, one at a time, that coming back into the family fold will not only be to their distinct advantage, but that it may also save their skins—vis à vis what our friend Horowitz seems to be up to.”

“And how, pray, do we accomplish that?”

“The Leo cousins all have names. They have addresses and telephone numbers. Quite a few of them live right here in Manhattan. Some of them we may have been passing on the street, every day.”

“But how do we approach them?”

Slowly, he points his finger at his mother. “Who’s the salesperson extraordinaire?” he says. “Who’s the famous charmer, the famous diplomat? Who’s the Great Persuader in this company?”

She laughs, a little uncertainly.

“And what better way to persuade the mysterious cousins than by explaining to them that you’re about to launch the most exciting new fragrance in the world?”

“Oh, Badger, do you really think it will be?”

“I said you’ve got to persuade them that it will be.”

“But what if it flops? Mark’s very nervous about this ad campaign. It could backfire on us—the disfigured face. If that happens, we could be left with fifty million dollars’ worth of—”

“Shit on our face. But we’re not going to let that happen, are we?”

Mimi hesitates. “But what if—” she begins, “—what if Michael is telling the truth? What if he isn’t after us at all? We’d be going to all this effort and expense for nothing.”

His look at her is incredulous. “What are you talking about?” he says.

“I mean he told me he has no interest in the beauty business. Doesn’t understand it, has no interest in it.”

He continues to look at her wide-eyed. “And you believed that?”

“Well, there’s a possibility he’s sincere, isn’t there?”

“Michael Horowitz, sincere? The guy’s famous for dirty deals!”

“But what if he’s just playing games with us, a kind of cat-and-mouse game, Badger?”

“But what the hell for? From what I know of this guy’s reputation, he doesn’t go into a deal for fun and games. When he buys something, it’s because he wants it.”

“But he denied this. He said—”

“I can’t believe I’m listening to this!” he says. “A minute ago, you were all fired up about this. All at once you’re waffling!”

“I’m not waffling! I’m just saying—”

“A minute ago, I heard you say you didn’t trust this character! I heard you say you were positive he was after us! Now you’re saying he’s maybe a good little Boy Scout, after all!”

“I did not say he was a Boy Scout! I said, can we give him the benefit of the doubt?”

“Playing devil’s advocate? For that little kike bastard?”

“Don’t ever use that term in front of me!” Suddenly she is very angry. This is something she is famous for never doing, losing her temper.

“Well, that’s what he is, isn’t he? His father was a caterer in Queens!”

“And my grandfather was a housepainter in the Bronx,” she says, just as furiously. “Is that better than a caterer in Queens?”

“Yes, god damn it!” he shouts. From the anteroom outside Mimi’s office, there is the sound of Mrs. Hanna, Mimi’s secretary, rather conspicuously clearing her throat. Mimi hears this, rises quickly from her desk, goes to the door, and closes it, leaning her back against it.

“Is this something they taught you at Yale?” she says through clenched teeth. “To talk like a bigot and a snob?”

“They taught me to recognize a lowlife when I see one!”

“Michael Horowitz is more of a gentleman than you are. And a better Jew.”

“Me? A Jew? Don’t give me that crap!”

“Why do you think you weren’t taken into Skull and Bones? Because you’re a Jew. The captain of the golf team, but you weren’t taken into Skull and Bones!”

“You’re full of crap! You know why I wasn’t tapped for Bones? Because Tony Beard blackballed me—after I saw him move his ball from a bad lie in the semifinals, that’s why! If the Myerson half of me is Jewish, the other half is Protestant. And I’ve never been inside a synagogue in my life.”

“You might try. You might learn something, because you’re a Jew. Jewishness comes from the mother. It comes from the mother’s milk.”

“I can’t believe I’m listening to this crap,” he says. “Next thing you’re going to tell me is that you breast-fed me, for Chris-sake.”

“As a matter of fact, I did. Though I don’t expect you to remember it.”

He averts his eyes. He rises, crosses to the window, and stands, his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, his back to her, looking out at the afternoon. “Anyway,” he says, “we weren’t talking about breast-feeding. We were talking about why you can’t seem to make a business decision, which is supposed to be your goddam job.”

“My job,” she says, and for the first time her voice has the beginnings of tears in it, “has involved a bit more than that, you might want to remember. It’s also been trying to hold this family together. It’s been trying to help my mother all these years. It’s been listening to Nonie’s complaints. It’s been trying to keep Edwee out of trouble. It’s been coping with Granny. It’s been dealing with the tragedy that was my father. It’s been trying to pick up the pieces of the shambles and mess that were left after Grandpa died, and it’s been doing all these things for years, since you were too young to know about any of these things, or even remember. That’s also been part of my goddam job.” Surprisingly, though tears were threatened, Mimi’s eyes are dry when she finishes saying this, and she is pleased with herself for this.

“We weren’t talking about that, either. We were talking about a New York wheeler-dealer who’s showing every sign of wanting to take over this company in a very unfriendly way—a guy you said you positively did not trust.”

“And you’re watching me have second thoughts about him. You see, I think … I think Michael admires us in a certain way. I think he’d like to feel he’s a part of us—not a big part, but a little part. Maybe that’s all it is. Michael has his sweet, kind of boyish and innocent side. He’s not all bad.”

He turns and faces her, and whistles softly. “Hey,” he says, “what’s going on here? Did this guy seduce you, or what?”

“Of course not!” she cries. “What a ridiculous thing to say.”

“By golly, I think he must have! This guy who’s managed to lay every good-looking broad in town.”

“Are you implying that I am one of Michael Horowitz’s broads?” They are shouting at each other again.

“That’s gotta be it: that baby-face got to you. You were taken in by those baby-blue eyes and cute little dimples! You’ve goddam fallen for the little prick!”

“Shut up, Badger! I will not listen to this garbage!”

He slams the palm of his hand on the windowsill. “Then stop waffling, Mom! Because that’s what you’re doing, waffling. Make up your effing mind. Is this guy a snake, or isn’t he? You’re the one who had lunch with him. Me, I’ve never met the creep!”

“The lunch was your idea, not mine! You’re the one who got me into this mess, you know!”

He stares at her. “All I know,” he says, “is that I’m talking to someone I used to think was a pretty smart lady, but who suddenly isn’t making a hell of a lot of sense.”

“Are you questioning my judgment?”

“If you want an honest answer—yes.”

She is pacing now, shoulders hunched, back and forth across her office carpet, like a sleek leopardess circling her prey, but her voice is wondering. “I wanted this company,” she says, “not for myself, but for you. I always wanted it for you, to take over someday from me.”

“That’s a lot of self-righteous, self-pitying crap.”

“But maybe I was wrong. Maybe this company isn’t for you. Maybe you find it … humiliating, to be working for a woman, and a woman who happens to be your mother in the bargain. Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s time for someone new, someone like Michael, to come in and take this company over. Maybe that’s why I can sympathize, a little, with what Michael says he wants.”

“More self-righteous, self-pitying crap.”

“I’m losing you, aren’t I, Badger. I can feel it, that I’m losing you. I feel it in the terrible things you’ve said to me today. I’m losing you. I feel you slipping away from me.”

He moves toward her and takes her by the shoulders, turning her so that she faces him. “Listen to me,” he says quietly. “All I know is that Horowitz is a fighter, and a fighter who, if he has to, doesn’t mind fighting dirty. All I’m saying is that if you’re going to have to fight him, you’re going to have to be prepared for a dirty fight. You’re going to have to go after him with a killer’s instinct. Where’s your killer instinct, Mom? It was old Adolph’s killer instinct that built this company, wasn’t it? The way he went after the Revsons, after Arden, after Rubinstein. If you’re going to find yourself in the ring with Horowitz, you’re going to have to decide what you think of him. Because if there’s going to be a fight, and if you’re going to win it, you’re going to have to go for the jugular.” Suddenly, he thrusts out his lower jaw sharply and, in the same motion, tosses a lock of sandy brown hair from across his forehead. “You’re going to have to hate him! You’ve got to be prepared to hate him. So don’t let yourself fall under his famous spell!”

“What?” she gasps. “What?”

“I said we’ve got to be prepared. We’ve got to line up our ammunition. He’s got his toe in the door already. And once the camel gets into the tent—”

“No,” she says, her eyes blazing. “I meant what you did just then, with your chin. Your hair. Have you always done that?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She moves away from him toward her desk and slumps limply in her chair, feeling faint. “You’re right,” she says. “Michael has no right owning any part of this company. Do your feasibility study. Do it as quickly as you can. Get the cousins’ names, addresses. I’ll contact them. We’ve got to get rid of Michael Horowitz as fast as we can. I think you’re right. He’s a dangerous man.”

“You’re the boss,” he says.

“And you’re the next boss. Remember that.”

The slim, stylishly dressed woman swings out through the 50th Street door of Saks Fifth Avenue and immediately an alarm goes off.

A uniformed guard steps toward her. “Excuse me, madam,” he says politely, “but may I just glance at the contents of your shopping bag?”

“What?” she says in a cultured voice. “What did you say?”

“I think,” he says, “that one of our salespeople may have neglected to remove the magnetic tag from one of your purchases. It caused the alarm to sound. If you’ll just let me look at the contents of your shopping bag, I think we can locate the problem.”

“Why, I’ve never heard of such a thing!” the woman cries indignantly. Other shoppers, heading out into the late-afternoon rush hour, pause to observe the scene.

“They’ve caught a shoplifter!” one woman says loudly to her companion.

“I must ask that you open your shopping bag,” the guard says. “Otherwise, I must—”

“Well, certainly!” the woman says. “But honestly, I’ve never been subjected to such a—”

“Ah,” the guard says, lifting a man’s alligator belt from the shopping bag. “Here is the problem. You see! The magnetic tag has not been removed from this article. You have your sales slip for this, of course.”

“Certainly! It’s in there somewhere, I suppose!”

The guard extracts a pink slip of paper from the bag and examines it. “I’m sorry,” he says, “but this is from the women’s shoe department, for the pair of shoes that I assume are in that box. I see no sales slip for a man’s belt.”

“This is ridiculous!” the woman cries. “I’ve been a Saks charge customer for years! Never have I been subjected to this sort of thing before!”

“Perhaps if we can go back to the small leather goods department, we can straighten this out,” he says, taking her arm.

“What?” she says, pulling away from him. “I’m in a terrible rush! This is most inconvenient. Don’t you know who I am? I am Naomi Myerson!”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I must—”

Suddenly she snatches the alligator belt from his hand and flings it in his face. “Take your damn belt!” she cries. “And if that belt turns up on my next Saks bill, I’ll sue! Do you hear me? I’ll sue!” She hurls herself through the second set of swinging doors and out into the rush-hour street.

It is evening now, and Mimi and her husband are sitting in their living room, sipping a martini before dinner.

“How was your day?” she asks him.

“Oh, routine,” he says. “Today was our monthly partners’ lunch. No big issues to discuss.”

“Ah, your partners’ lunch,” she says. She sips her drink. “Where did you do it this time?”

“At the Downtown Club. And you?”

He has obviously forgotten that today she was lunching with Michael. “Oh, I was fairly busy. I just had a sandwich at my desk.”

She gazes into her cocktail glass. And so here we sit, she thinks, two famously successful people in a two-career household, so smiled upon by fortune. And this is the point to which twenty-nine years of marriage have brought us. We sit here, domestic as that silver cocktail shaker—that cocktail shaker that was a wedding gift, that has all the names of Brad’s ushers at the wedding engraved on it—and tell lies to one another.

Palm Beach, Michael had said, come with me to Palm Beach. Palm Beach, that latest triumph of the Jewish Renaissance. She has always hated Palm Beach, and all those other places that were always her grandfather’s places, never her own. If he had suggested Srinagar or Ootacamund or Katmandu, or some other more exotic place—the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, he had once suggested in a moment of fantasy, where they would start a sheep ranch—would she have flown there with him?

“You never loved the shegetz you married, did you?”

Right now, she does not have the answer to either of these questions.