Beauty: A Novel by Frederick Dillen Page B

talking about serious personal risk for herself. Even if she got fired, when she got back to New York, she’d still be around the business at that level in the big leagues. If she stayed here, it wouldn’t take long for her to be out of the loop for good. She knew that, and she was signing on regardless, which counted big-time as far as Dave was concerned. She was also asking Dave and Annette to take a risk, but they didn’t have nearly as much to lose as she did.
    No question she’d need him if she was going to buy the plant. She probably didn’t know yet that she’d also need Annette, but that would become apparent.
    Dave stood up behind his desk. He turned on his radio, and a familiar dree-ee-ee-eam came out low. He snapped his fingers once and did a very quick guitar move—not to frighten the new leader of the pack.
    Some people, handling a situation, sweated through their clothes. Not Dave. He joined the band in this kind of deal. He didn’t have a clue about Carol MacLean. Or Annette. He spun around to take in his windowsill. Pictures of grown daughters. Picture of the last steel mill, into which you could fit fifty of this new fish plant. Bent putter and a bad-luck golf glove. Golf hat from Augusta that his wife got him when he couldn’t go. Child-size football helmet on a plaque beside the pictures of the kid teams he coached. Then on that wall beside the window, a big watercolor painting of the old and then-still-active Elizabeth’s Fish plant from across the harbor. Good picture. A plant he liked more than he’d admitted to Carol when they were down there.
    Dave got back to the radio and shucked his blazer off. He wore a green necktie and a white dress shirt with Ralph Lauren’s little polo player. If somebody like Carol’s boss Baxter saw the polo player, he’d know that Dave was deep in the minor leagues.
    He rolled up his sleeves and sat back down as if his desk were a jacked Fairlane, and he asked Annette, serious question, “Yes?”
    Carol, looking confused, said, “Maybe this stays among us for a while. What I said on the floor will go around town, but let’s not chat about it with Baxter Blume. I’m not going to cheat Baxter Blume, but I’m thinking we could do right by everybody, and if Baxter Blume finds out too soon, they might decide to get me off the property as fast as I got the fat boys off.”
    Dave turned down the radio to get this. He had just pretty much decided to trust Carol. So he hated to hear her say they weren’t going to cheat her old boss, especially after she’d just gotten done saying she hadn’t lied to the women on the floor. Nixon came to mind: Your president is not a liar and a cheater.
    Carol said, “Nothing changes with this new plant.” She looked at Dave as if she could read his mind. “It’s a high-volume, low-margin plant with way too much debt to overcome. Even if we could afford to buy it from Baxter Blume and take it through bankruptcy, we’d have a long haul rebuilding and expanding the brand. And we’d probably never get to capacity competing with similar but much larger operations working at less than capacity for established brands fifty miles south and a hundred miles north. You know all that. So on behalf of Baxter Blume, we sell everything we can for the best we can get, and Elizabeth’s Fish goes into the ground, and whatever debt we don’t put into the ground at the same time, that goes to work for Baxter Blume. I came here to make this happen, and I want it done right. Only, while we’re selling everything else, we also sell the old plant, debt free but at established fair value, to ourselves, to a new company that we’re going to run. When we get to that part of the process, we talk to Baxter Blume. If we get the name cheap, maybe we take the name. Maybe not. But if we aren’t squeaky clean going to Baxter Blume, they’ll know and they’ll hit us over the head.”
    They couldn’t yet know how the numbers would play out, but what