Bitter Business

house. I stayed up nights working on a second ulcer trying to figure out a way to keep the unions out and the bank from shutting me down. Ask Daniel, he’ll tell you what it was like. He and I have been through a lot together. It’s hard to believe that we’re not going to be together through this.”
    “I went to see him before I left,” I said. “I know that if he could be here, he would.”
    “You know, I used to worry all the time that Dagny would get killed doing that rock-climbing stuff. That’s how her husband died. Slipped and bounced against the side of a cliff like a yo-yo. He was dead when they brought him down. I could never understand how she could do it, why she wasn’t afraid. She always told me that it didn’t scare her because she never thought about falling. She was always looking ahead of her, thinking about the next piece of rock she was about to climb. She was concentrating so hard on getting where she needed to go that she didn’t have time to worry about what would happen if she didn’t make it.
    “That’s what running your own business is like. It’s not about rules and briefs and working in a fancy office on LaSalle Street with hot-and-cold-running secretaries. It’s about getting where you have to because you’re too stubborn or too stupid to listen to anybody who tells you that you can’t do it.
    “Dagny loved the business. More than any of my children, she was the one who loved it the way I love it. They wanted her to go to Harvard, you know. Offered her a scholarship, the whole thing, but she wouldn’t go. You want to know why?”
    “Why?”
    “Because she didn’t want to leave Chicago. She went to Northwestern so that she could still work for the company on the weekends and over vacation. She’s been keeping the books since she was nineteen years old. I can’t believe we’re going to be putting her into the ground tomorrow....” His voice cracked and faded away.
    I got up to get myself another drink. Not because I wanted one, but because I wanted to save him the embarrassment of my watching him cry.
    I promised myself that this was the last case like this I was ever going to take. I liked meetings in conference rooms with lawyers who screamed and called you names. Lawyers who, when the negotiating was done, wanted to know whether you were free for lunch on Friday. This was too personal—too painful.
    “She liked you, you know. She told me that the morning that she died. Philip and I were arguing about some stupid thing or other—I can’t remember; we’re always fighting—it doesn’t matter about what. We’ve been fighting so long we don’t know how to do anything else. Dagny came into my office and told me she thought you were a good lawyer—a good choice for the company—that you’d be able to handle this mess with Lydia and all the rest of it.”
    “Have you talked to Lydia at all since then?” I asked. “She’s beside herself,” Jack replied. “She and Dagny were like this.” For a brief instant his two hands made a token marriage. “I’m sure that she’s completely forgotten that whole business about her shares....”
    I remembered my conversation with her lawyer earlier that day, and his satisfaction in telling me that he’d just gotten off the phone with Lydia, who was determined not to allow her sister’s death to interfere with the sale of her shares. Ï looked at Jack Cavanaugh and could not tell him. It was an act of charity that I would soon come to regret.
     
    Back in my room I took a long, hot shower. Riding exercises muscles that get no other use and I suddenly found myself aware of each and every one of them. I took two Advils and combed all the snarls out of my wet hair while I waited for them to work. I finished and changed into a pair of clean gray sweatpants and a white T-shirt, but I was still so sore that I knew I’d never be able to sleep, so I set off toward the main house to see if I could scare up a stiff scotch or, at the very least, some more of Jack Cavanaugh’s bourbon.
    I was surprised to find all the lights on in the house and an ample woman with a stiff beehive of teased hair at Work in the kitchen.
    “Howdy,” she said. “You must be the lawyer lady that’s come down from Chicago. I’m Darlene. What can I get for you, hon?”
    I explained about the scotch and she obligingly pulled a bottle of single malt from a cupboard in the pantry and fetched me a glass.
    “I sure hope the weather holds for