Read Online Beauty: A Novel by Frederick Dillen - Free Book Online

Carol said, and how she said it, made sense to Dave. He had been in business long enough to see bodies, so he knew when to leave the room. At least he hoped he did. For now, he was staying in.
    Carol said, only to Annette, “We’ll figure out, mostly you’ll figure out, whether the old plant, free of debt, will buy itself and provide enough money for us to get traction. Will it still have some market? Do we need employee stockholders to pay the bills until we have traction?”
    Dave nodded at Annette to go for it.
    She said to Carol, “You’re asking whether it’s even possible that we ever actually would get traction.”
    Carol said, “That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” and Dave watched it happen as Annette stepped up as a player for the first time.
    Carol, on the other hand, looked nervous for the first time. Dave wondered if she was having second thoughts about throwing what was left of her career out the window. Please, God, he thought, don’t let her be worrying about whether she’d be stupid enough to put her own money at risk. That kind of thing could be contagious, and Dave didn’t want to be around it. What would her guy Baxter have to say about that kind of risk?
    Baxter Blume had taken this company on so cheaply that there hadn’t been real need to run, or time to run, even a feint at due diligence. Which was why Dave believed Carol didn’t know shit about this company. Carol was risking enough by going forward on a hunch and with people she’d just met. There was no way she would invest her own money, Dave thought.
    Carol was focused on Annette. She had asked Annette whether there could be traction, and Annette was thinking.
    Annette said, “Yes.”
    She said it to Carol, and then turned and said it to Dave. “Yes.”
    Annette put her notebook down on the floor and leaned forward and said it again. “Yes.”
    Carol looked at Dave to see if he was letting Annette call it.
    Annette said, “It will have traction.”
    Dave nodded back to Carol and said, “Absolutely.”
    Outside, rain had begun to hit the window hard, but inside was stillness, and Dave watched Carol considering. At some point she’d have to consider whether the women she’d talked to on the plant floor would and could deliver.
    She looked at Dave and said, “The women are solid, right?”
    The women were different generations of Elizabeth Island Yankees and Italians and Portuguese, some with faces like Annette’s, some paler, some darker, some harder. There were also Asian and South American workers now. Dave knew them to be, all of them, good workers, and he believed they would jump at the chance of starting up again in the old plant.
    He said, “No question.”
    Carol grinned at him and back at Annette.
    Dave said, “So, what about the three of us?”
    And Carol said, “I am in. I am going after this new company, period. I’d sure like to hear the two of you say that you’re in.”
    “Commitment’s good, especially when getting close to a corpse. Well, I like the corpse. I’m in, Carol, and I’m glad to be in with you, and glad to be with Annette, if she’s in.”
    Annette said, “In,” very loud, and then laughed at how loud, and both of them laughed with her, and then Carol said, “Okay. Let’s get started.” And the laughter stopped.
    Carol was a natural leader, which was something you felt, and Dave felt it, and it looked as if Annette did, too.
    Carol said, “Annette, I’d like you to start working up valuations for everything we’re going to unload, in individual pieces and in various likely packages. While you’re doing that, please keep an eye out for however the fat boys are still ripping off the company. I know I mentioned it before, but I’d be amazed if they didn’t have something going.”
    “Fat boys? The other senior executives, you mean?”
    “Yes, forgive me.”
    “No. They are fat.”
    Dave didn’t have to be reminded why he liked Annette, but he liked being