And One to Die On(7)

“My mother is a woman with traditional values, Martin. We get along just fine. And you can hardly call Tasheba Kent a paragon of traditional values. This is a woman who played the sexual aggressor in twenty movies starting back before women had the vote.”

“The vote isn’t the point either, Mathilda. The point here is that Tasheba Kent was always very male-positive. She saw men as a good thing. Not like you.”

“Wonderful, Martin.”

“I’m just trying to warn you. This is an important account. I don’t want you to blow it.”

Actually, Mathilda thought, dropping a whole fistful of sunflower seeds this time, so that they fell like snow on the head of a young man dressed for the starring role in Jesus Christ Superstar, what Martin really wanted was to get her to quit. This was an important account, and it was driving him absolutely crazy that she had gotten it. What made it worse was that nobody had handed it to her. Martin’s usual tactic, when Mathilda got work he wanted for himself, was to blame it on “affirmative action”—a policy that Halbard’s Auction House, being a British company, did not in fact follow. Anybody could tell that much just by looking around at the third floor, where all the auction coordinators worked. It wasn’t that there weren’t plenty of women, because there were. It wasn’t that there weren’t plenty of black people and Asians and Indians from New Delhi and other people who might qualify as marginal in the ordinary scheme of things, because Halbard’s had a better record at that kind of thing than most American companies. The problem was that 99 percent of these people had British accents, and of the 1 percent left over, a fair number had Scots accents. That was the official and unofficial hiring practices policy at Halbard’s: hire British if at all possible, even if you have to bring a load of secretaries in on the boat.

With Tasheba Kent, though, Mathilda could not have been upstaged, or assigned out, or any of the other things Halbard’s upper management liked to do to make sure the Americans didn’t get their hands on anything important. The Tasheba Kent auction was Mathilda’s by right. She was the one who had seen the article—on a back page of the “Metropolitan” section of The New York Times, near the bottom—where Tasheba Kent’s lawyer had been quoted as saying that Miss Kent and Mr. Marsh were considering an auction of their movie mementos and personal things. She was the one who had called the lawyer to offer the services of Halbard’s Auction House. She was the one who had gone over the list of probable sale items with an acerbic young woman named Geraldine Dart. Nobody at Halbard’s could deny that the Tasheba Kent auction had been constructed out of almost nothing by Mathilda Frazier herself, and there was absolutely nothing Martin Michaelson could do about it.

“Mathilda?” Martin demanded. “Are you listening to me?”

“Always, Martin,” Mathilda said.

“I just want to be sure you’re listening to me. I just want to make sure I’m getting through to you. If you aren’t careful, this trip of yours could get to be an absolute disaster.”

“Well, Martin, that’s always true, isn’t it?”

“What are you going to do if you get there and just put her right off? You don’t realize it, but you’re very abrasive.”

“Thanks, Martin.”

“You’re very aggressive and unfeminine. You really are. I know that’s not supposed to count anymore, but this is an older woman you’re going to be dealing with.”

“I know who I’m going to be dealing with, Martin.”

“Some women can be very competitive without losing their femininity, but it’s like walking a tightrope. Most women just haven’t got what it takes.”

“Do you have a dictionary of clichés in your office, Martin, where you can look things up whenever you’re at a loss for words?”

“What?”

“Never mind. Listen, Martin, I’ve got to get off the phone now. I’ve got to go down the hall and see Phyllis.”

“Yes. Of course. None of us can afford to keep Phyllis waiting. But you’ll think about it, won’t you?”

“Think about what?”

“About not going to Maine, of course. Maybe it would be the best thing. Then Tasheba Kent would never have to know that the two of you don’t get along.”

“Good-bye, Martin.”

Mathilda hung up and rubbed her forehead. I’m not going to go check myself out in a mirror, she told herself, I’m just not. Martin Michaelson wouldn’t recognize femininity if it walked up and bit him on the ass. In the end, she couldn’t help herself. She fished an ancient compact out of the bottom of her purse and surveyed her eyes and eyebrows and eyelashes, her nose and cheekbones, the line of her jaw. Everything seemed to be in place. Nothing seemed to have “masculinized” while she wasn’t looking. She hadn’t started growing whiskers on her chin or—or what, for God’s sake?