Bitter Business

When is Dagny planning on giving him her ultimatum?”
    “Tonight. She’s invited her dad and Peaches to dinner. The question is, will it work?”
    “Given the choice between losing Lydia as a shareholder and Dagny as a chief financial officer, I think Jack will stick with Dagny.”
    “And if he doesn’t?”
    “Then you’ll have to find some other way to convince him. I have to tell you, Kate, there will be no peace in the Cavanaugh family until Lydia is out of the company.”
    “And if Jack won’t buy her out?”
    “Then believe me, there will be no limit to the price he will be asked to pay.”
     
    I spent the rest of the day trying to push ahead on other matters, but every time the phone rang it was another Cavanaugh. Philip, furious, reported that his phone was ringing off the hook with investment bankers either volunteering their services or requesting information about the company. Jack called twice, and even though I spent more than half an hour on the phone with him, each time I hung up wondering why he’d called, other than to vent his frustration. I even talked to Peaches, who suggested in her sweet southern drawl that I knock some sense into her stepdaughter Lydia before she drove Jack into coronary arrest.
    I didn’t hear from Dagny until lunchtime and then it was only to remind me about Cecilia Dobson’s funeral, which I had already forgotten about completely.
    “I was hoping you wouldn’t mind swinging by the plant and picking me up,” Dagny ventured. “That way I’d have an excuse for not going with my father or Philip. They’re both insane about the article in the Journal this morning and I’m frankly sick of hearing about it.”
    “I’d be happy to. What time do you want me to be there?”
    “I’ll wait for you in front of the building at three-thirty,” said Dagny. “You won’t even have to get out of the car.”
     
    I asked Cheryl to hold my calls and I shut the door. I kicked off my shoes, dragged my disc player out from my bottom drawer, and pulled a CD from the pile—The Smiths, as it turned out. Cranking up the volume, I happily immersed myself in the Frostman Refrigeration file—a dull-as-dishwater corporate restructuring, blessedly devoid of any and all family entanglements.
    When it was time to leave and pick Dagny up, I’d gotten the Frostman memo and a full third of the other tasks off my most urgent to-do pile. So it was with a much lighter heart than at any other time in that horror show of a week that I set off to Cecilia Dobson’s funeral.
    As I drove south on State Street, with its odd assortment of auto parts stores and wig emporiums, it occurred to me, not for the first time, that I really needed to get rid of my old Volvo and buy a new car. Russell and I had picked out the station wagon, a wedding present to ourselves that we planned on filling up with dogs and kids. For a long time after his death it really was sentiment that made me hang on to it. Recently, I realized, it was more like entropy.
    I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d had it washed. The man in the parking garage in my building offers—no, I take that back—begs me to let him wash it. But I’ve let it go for so long that I’m almost afraid of what I’ll see once all the layers of urban grime are rinsed away. Besides, if he washed the outside, then I’d have to do something about the interior, too.
    I glanced over my shoulder at the backseat. I saw old newspapers, a dirty blanket, a crumpled bag from Harold’s Fried Chicken, and so many empty Diet Coke cans that every time I hit a pothole I heard a tinny clang. If a car could have mice, I concluded, mine would.
    I pulled into the Superior Plating lot, grateful for being a few minutes early. The lot was almost completely empty and I remembered what Dagny had said about closing early in order to let employees attend the funeral. I spent the next few minutes frantically cleaning up the worst of the mess in my car, including some McDonald’s wrappers of uncertain provenance and more empty bags of M&M’s than I’d like to confess to. That done, I checked the front door, but there was no sign of Dagny.
    She had said that the cemetery was close to the plant, so I waited a few more minutes, growing increasingly uncertain. Perhaps I’d gotten the time wrong or misunderstood her directions about where to meet. There was a reason, I realized, that I usually left these kinds of arrangements to Cheryl. I picked up my car