Read Online Beauty: A Novel by Frederick Dillen - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Frederick Dillen
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the harbor is dying. At every one of these meetings, going back awhile, there’s been more and more agitation to break the zoning restriction and cash in on commercial development of the waterfront property. It’s rare that these would happen on the same day, but the zoning meeting is set in stone, and the thing at the gym is short notice and urgent. Consider yourself lucky, Carol.”
She grinned. “I’m there for both events.”
And while Carol was at the high school, Dave was going to look for Mathews’s secret files.
Dave could hardly believe the old plant was waking from the dead. He stood back up and said in his sports announcer voice, “Yes. The team is coming out to play the second half.”
High School for Fishermen
C arol walked over to the high school from her apartment. She walked fast. She was eager. No more waiting for somebody to hand over a company. Carol was in motion, on her own, grabbing a company of her own.
The high school was fifties modern, and around the edges of the parking lot were the fishermen’s pickups and flatbeds, most of them hard-used. The rest of the parking lot was kids’ cars. Carol had never been back to her own high school, but over the years she’d gone to other high schools for meetings with workers and townspeople as factories were shut. No matter how tough the times, the kids had cars.
For Carol, cars had meant the alley she knew as a kid. She’d made her friends there. They were older, though less older as new kids came in and the bigger kids left for real jobs or the draft. By the time Dominic came, Carol had her job getting parts for the alley. She used that money to buy her own parts for the bent-frame, free-if-you-haul-it-away Mustang that her dad paid the towing for. Dominic was taller than she was, which few of them were because she got her height early and a lot of it. He was also only three years older, though that could seem plenty in those days. What was important was that Dominic knew about car engines and how to work on them. And because she didn’t realize how good he was at first, she did a crazy thing. She took his hand and said she’d introduce him to the parts guys at the store. He laughed and made her pull him all the way, leaning back but not letting go of her hand. When they reached the store, she told the guys to please help him out since he might want to get parts on his own.
Carol kept her hands in her pockets all the way back to the alley. Then Dominic grabbed her hand out of her pocket when she’d relaxed. He pulled her to where his hood was leaning on a boarded door down the alley. She hadn’t seen that he’d cut it and had a scoop ready. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed. She had suggested a standard barrel because he didn’t look cool enough. Then she looked at the cut for the scoop, and it was very clean, and when she looked at him, he shrugged.
Except he was still holding her hand, which he also thought was funny, and she did, too, after half-pretending to be mad. So he was like a brother at first, and she didn’t have a brother. Then they were best friends, and later everything else besides.
High school for her as a kid, if anybody there had noticed, was the wrong clothes with the wrong face and the wrong body. She didn’t care. Her life was in the alley.
When she was at high school gyms for meetings to bury factories, she was invisible to the kids just by virtue of being an adult. Around Baxter Blume, she was mostly invisible because she was gone so much, besides which, she was a colleague nobody had to compete with, doing a job nobody else wanted. Long before Remy’s call, she’d become a parochial throwback who was never going to get near the front of the line. Susannah wouldn’t know where to find a suit like the ones Carol wore. Susannah was going to participate in the equity funds sooner or later regardless of having to babysit the company Carol had wanted. Had Susannah ever had to compete with Carol? What
She grinned. “I’m there for both events.”
And while Carol was at the high school, Dave was going to look for Mathews’s secret files.
Dave could hardly believe the old plant was waking from the dead. He stood back up and said in his sports announcer voice, “Yes. The team is coming out to play the second half.”
High School for Fishermen
C arol walked over to the high school from her apartment. She walked fast. She was eager. No more waiting for somebody to hand over a company. Carol was in motion, on her own, grabbing a company of her own.
The high school was fifties modern, and around the edges of the parking lot were the fishermen’s pickups and flatbeds, most of them hard-used. The rest of the parking lot was kids’ cars. Carol had never been back to her own high school, but over the years she’d gone to other high schools for meetings with workers and townspeople as factories were shut. No matter how tough the times, the kids had cars.
For Carol, cars had meant the alley she knew as a kid. She’d made her friends there. They were older, though less older as new kids came in and the bigger kids left for real jobs or the draft. By the time Dominic came, Carol had her job getting parts for the alley. She used that money to buy her own parts for the bent-frame, free-if-you-haul-it-away Mustang that her dad paid the towing for. Dominic was taller than she was, which few of them were because she got her height early and a lot of it. He was also only three years older, though that could seem plenty in those days. What was important was that Dominic knew about car engines and how to work on them. And because she didn’t realize how good he was at first, she did a crazy thing. She took his hand and said she’d introduce him to the parts guys at the store. He laughed and made her pull him all the way, leaning back but not letting go of her hand. When they reached the store, she told the guys to please help him out since he might want to get parts on his own.
Carol kept her hands in her pockets all the way back to the alley. Then Dominic grabbed her hand out of her pocket when she’d relaxed. He pulled her to where his hood was leaning on a boarded door down the alley. She hadn’t seen that he’d cut it and had a scoop ready. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed. She had suggested a standard barrel because he didn’t look cool enough. Then she looked at the cut for the scoop, and it was very clean, and when she looked at him, he shrugged.
Except he was still holding her hand, which he also thought was funny, and she did, too, after half-pretending to be mad. So he was like a brother at first, and she didn’t have a brother. Then they were best friends, and later everything else besides.
High school for her as a kid, if anybody there had noticed, was the wrong clothes with the wrong face and the wrong body. She didn’t care. Her life was in the alley.
When she was at high school gyms for meetings to bury factories, she was invisible to the kids just by virtue of being an adult. Around Baxter Blume, she was mostly invisible because she was gone so much, besides which, she was a colleague nobody had to compete with, doing a job nobody else wanted. Long before Remy’s call, she’d become a parochial throwback who was never going to get near the front of the line. Susannah wouldn’t know where to find a suit like the ones Carol wore. Susannah was going to participate in the equity funds sooner or later regardless of having to babysit the company Carol had wanted. Had Susannah ever had to compete with Carol? What
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