The Serial Achiever

“What a flight!” She plopped herself into the passenger side, stuffing the bag between her knees. “Gross! It was like— Daddy, do you have any idea what supply chain management is?”

“What what is?”

“Supply chain management.”

“Just to give you an idea,” he said, thinking back to b-school. “it’s the process by which—”

“Never mind, I didn’t really want to know. But I had to listen to two guys talking about it in loud voices all the way from Kennedy. I mean— Enough!” She leaned over to plant a little dab of a kiss on his cheek. “Where are we going to dinner?”

“How does Kate Mantilini sound?” said Mike. “Okay, okay,” he muttered at the cop who winked at Claire before pointing to the road.

“Excellent. They have awesome chocolate martinis.”

“So, buttercup,” Mike said. “How’d things go in New York?”

“In a sec. Last month— I have to tell you, since we’re going there—last month I was in Kate Mantilini with a date. And it was awesome. Know why? Because just as we pulled up, the doors opened and, like, you won’t believe who came out. The Governor.”

“The Governator?”

“And his wife. You could barely see her because they were surrounded by all these state police. He towered over the cops. He has an incredible tan.”

“Don’t you mean an ‘awesome’ tan?”

“Wait— I’m not finished. So anyway. Anyhow. Any—hooooo, the parking valets were, like—‘Eeee! It’s the Governor!’ When he started shaking hands, my date and I were, like, ‘We should go up to him. Get a handshake too.’ So we did, and I couldn’t believe how much older he looks in person than in the movies. I mean, old.”

“So?” Mike said. “Oh, I get it. How old is old?”

“Here.” Claire reached into her bag as Mike moved into the stop-and-go of airport traffic. “Souvenir of New York.”

“What is that thing?” Realizing he still wasn’t in the exit lane, Mike eased the car over while trying to reach for the large round plastic doughnut-like object.

“A bagel-shaped hat. Cute? This was so stupid it was perfect. Go ahead, put it on. No, you’ve got it backwards. Turn it around. Yeah, awesome.”

“The hat’s all you bought?” Mike said. “Don’t you have a few Picassos in the trunk?”

“Picassos, right. You know our firm handles strictly medium-priced art. You know our clients are corporations looking for something to hang in the reception area.”

“They could hang this hat on the wall and call it art.”

“Actually, I bought two paintings by Chuck Close. Just little ones, not his usual gigantic portraits. These were only twenty thousand apiece. If we can mark them up to thirty—”

“Chuck who?”

“You’d like what he’s doing with scale. Plus there’s the whole dialogue with photography thing.”

“Now you’re talking like an art dealer.”

“I am an art dealer. But it’s not just photography, it’s more— More pointillist, not pure photorealism. And there’s the kind of— Like I said, dialogue with photography thing going on. And so there’s that and the way he plays games with your perception and the facture of the image.”

“I see,” Mike said, not bored yet, not quite impressed by the urgency of her involvement in something he couldn’t understand. At least she was talking like an adult now. Talking money. “Excellent nose,” he blurted out. “Full rich body with hints of oak and raspberry.”

“Huh?”

“Long, clean finish. Sorry, that’s not art, that’s wine.” He could tell from her silence his little joke had annoyed her. Working for a corporate art dealer as she did, hanging medium-priced pictures on the walls of medium-priced executives, flying to New York on buying trips, what was it really? Shopping. She called it “Checking the art scene,” but she was really being paid to go shopping.

“Are you still dating that same guy as before?” he said.

“Are you looking for something else to annoy me about?”

The light turned green. Just as Mike gunned the Miata across Sepulveda onto Century Boulevard, Claire planted a second kiss, softer and more lingering than the first, onto his scratchy cheek. At the next light, he removed the hat and placed it on her head but she immediately took it off and tucked it into the space between their seats, shaking out her brown hair so it fluttered and flapped wildly in the breeze. There was something wondrous in the way the beaus shuttled through her life like mechanical ducks in a shooting gallery. She consumed them, used them up. He stole a look at the face beside him, wondering what lay behind its smooth contours. Something vague and cruel, he supposed, a kind of heedlessness that came naturally to women, especially a young one. He reached over and gave her hand an affectionate squeeze.

In the last glow of twilight, the sleek skyscrapers on both sides of Century Boulevard seemed taller than he remembered, but less individual, harder to tell apart in the fading light. “How many of these did you build anyway?” said Claire, nodding toward the row of silhouettes jutting blackly into the fading sky.

“That reminds me,” Mike said. “I was saving this for dinner, but what the hell. I’m selling the business.”

“Daddy—you’re not retiring at fifty-three?”

“Fifty-two.” Mike turned onto the freeway entrance and eased into traffic. He waited till he was comfortably up to speed, waited a few car-lengths more, then for no reason he waited few more car lengths before answering. “I’ve decided to become a neuroscientist. L-A’s got enough of my office buildings.”

“Does mom know about this?”

“What for? So she can take another swipe at me in front of Dick?

“Who?”

“Her boyfriend. Dick.”

“Troy,” Claire said.

“Troy. Troy?”

“Her boyfriend’s name is Troy, daddy.”

“Dick. Troy. Dick. I just thought it was important to tell you first.”

“I’m sorry. It must be very interesting. Neuroscience, I mean. Of course I don’t know the first thing about it.”

“Interesting?” Mike said. “That’s putting it mildly.”

“Wait a minute,” Claire said. “Are you talking about brain science? I think I heard about this. Wasn’t there a TV program? I don’t recall. I know they were trying to show it’s the coming thing in science.”

“I wouldn’t know that part of it.”

“Wait a minute,” she said again. “Hold on a minute; let’s backtrack here. You’re going to become a scientist? At fifty-three you’re going to stop being a real estate developer and become a brain scientist?”

“Fifty-two, god dammit.”

“But everyone knows you’re the one in the family who builds big skyscrapers. ”

“Everybody?”

“Oh, you know. Me. Mom. Grandma. Me. Everybody.”

“Who else does that include? Your ex-boyfriends? The Governator, that famous expert on neuroscience?” He could picture the whole bunch discussing any number of topics they knew nothing about with an airy assurance that made him want to rip the smugness right out of them the way he wanted to rip the cigarette out of her mouth.

“You know what you are?” Claire said. “A serial achiever. You collect accomplishments like some guys collect classic cars.”

“I think I just—”

“Can’t you leave some accomplishment for someone else?”

It took Mike less than half a second to think of a reply but, watching Claire’s wounded propriety tumbling out, he knew if he said anything more her next words would be please take me home, which he didn’t want. Were all women like this? No, that wasn’t fair; Bethany Steiner, his hard-driving vice president of finance, handled anything he could throw at her and never lost her balance.

Looking up the road shortly before the exit ramp to the 10 Freeway he saw red brake lights flashing, then everyone slowed to a stop. He eased into neutral and put his foot on the brake. Windows were being rolled down, heads sticking out.