Programmed for Peril

economic style choice made in her lean days and turned it into the PC-Pros’ uniform; all her employees wore white jumpsuits.
    She pressed her thighs. Pretty firm. With calves to match. Twice a week hop-till-you-drop aerobics maintained the foundation of her five-nine frame. The rest of her filled the uniform well enough, despite her having given birth to Melody and passed the big three-oh mark. What we have here, Morley, she thought, is a durable model. But not an indestructible one. Last week she had spotted a thin blue vein decorating the back of her leg just above the knee.
    She turned to the computer keyboard and pulled up her personal calendar. A day in the life of Ms. Patricia McMullen Morley, suppy—struggling urban professional. 8:00 A.M.—Meet with the two-woman sales force to hammer out strategy for next year; 10:00 A.M.—Visit Marteko Construction, potential client, to provide assurances about service reliability; lunch meeting (subs or McBurgers out of bags) with her three techies to budget for the new fiscal year, and an afternoon devoted to updating the PC-Pros’ master workplan. That meant four solo hours trying to balance hope against reality.
    The evening she’d spend at her fiancé Foster Palmer’s yacht club. He was giving a dinner for his crew members to celebrate their third-place finish in the Marielle Island race. Wives were invited. She didn’t find it all that easy to talk to those ladies. They all had pretend jobs or volunteered. None had ever really felt the lash of want, as she had, so they lacked her hunger for personal commercial accomplishment. They devoted their energies to protecting their fiefdoms of marriage and family, climbing to the towers of intuition in search of predatory female infiltrators. They had the luxury to cultivate their insecurities. Trish felt more comfortable with the men, matched their brash kidding with her own, sometimes to Foster’s embarrassment. What the hell! A girl had to let go a little in this world, even within the tradition-minded West Manachogue Yacht and Tennis Club.
    She was on the road to Marteko in a van when the cellular phone beeped. Whoopee, her mother Marylou. Wanting to talk about—guess what? Her daughter’s wedding, scheduled for September fifteenth and counting. Her mother’s deceptively slow, Savannah-softened voice purred in her ear, “Patricia, you simply must make a decision about the reception site. La Fontanella called. They want a yes or no. Other brides are interested in the facilities. And you know, I think you should commit.”
    “They charge like I’m the last Romanov,” Trish said. “So what if they’re a bit pricey? Hasn’t Foster generously agreed to help out?”
    “I’d rather handle it all myself.”
    “That’s quite impossible financially, Patricia. And you know it. The style of wedding you’ve chosen simply doesn’t come at bargain-basement prices.”
    “Is it the wedding I’ve chosen, Mother? Or the one you’re designing? I’m starting to get the feeling we’re talking two different things here.”
    Ah, Mom’s measured silence. I know her every move, Trish thought. But like a second-rate professional athlete playing against a superstar, I can’t stop her. Now Marylou would sock her with a big deflator.
    “My dear, I shouldn’t need to remind you that your marriage to Foster Palmer will be a major turnaround in a life that not long ago could charitably have been described as an unmitigated California disaster,” her mother drawled. “I’m trying to help you start that marriage in a style suitable to the social stratum into which—against all odds—you will enter. There has never been any question in my mind that you belong there. And always have. Your father and I raised and educated you to have the opportunity to step up in life. Now that you’re on the verge, all I’m asking to get you to the final height is your cooperation. It puzzles me why you won’t give it.”
    The answer, Trish knew, was residual rebellion, a flash of the old fire that had sent her to the coast and into electronic counterculture. Mom had always been the primary mover where Trish was concerned. Dad had been too agreeable, wandering off into his metallurgical books when the domestic going got tough. So it had been Marylou who arranged for the private primary school, then for four high school years at Emma Willard, thrusting up from its Troy, New York hilltop like a castle. There unsure girls often became