Beauty: A Novel Read Free

number with freckles whispered loudly enough for her to hear, “Beast.” And before Baxter could tell him to shut up, everybody else, including Blume and Patterson, whispered loudly in chorus, well before she could have gotten past reception and out the lobby doors, “Beast, Beast, Beast.”

Salvage
    S he was in the car on the Mass Pike, still trying to figure what had put Baxter into his asshole mood. She thought maybe there was something up with the fish plant. That would explain why they’d brought Remy in. Carol had just happened to walk across the line of fire. She could take it, and she had years of practice shrugging off the Beast stuff, though Baxter had never thrown it at her before. His hair was seriously on fire, about the fish outfit and a lot more. Her phone went off, and she tried to come up with what he needed to be told.
    “Carol.” It was Remy in his keep-calm, bus-wreck voice.
    She said, “Let me call you back.” So she didn’t have to deal with Baxter right now.
    If it was Remy, there was a problem at the fish plant, but how bad could it be? Remy’s bus-wreck voice meant there could be news of an executive at the plant who carried automatic weapons and was off his medication. Or a workforce of amputees. Worst case, Baxter had suddenly decided Carol had zero time in which to clean house and run the garage sale. Whatever it was, she had seen it before and could handle it.
    All that actually counted was what always counted: the fish plant, in this case, didn’t fit with anything Baxter Blume had in hand or in the pipeline and was not viable on its own. Carol’s background this time around was thinner than usual, but the basics were familiar. Baxter Blume had had to take the fish plant along with a package of more appealing components acquired from a Japanese firm. The Japanese had gotten the plant from Germans, the initial outside owners of what had for generations been a private company under local ownership. The Germans had made a mistake and talked the Japanese, supposedly a more natural fish owner, into making another mistake. For Baxter Blume, the fish plant was simply a cheap lubricant to get the Japanese deal out the door. As best Carol could tell, there had once been enough profits to justify a loan for a new plant even as the margins were shrinking. Now, with the North Atlantic fish stock apparently approaching terminal depletion, the fish-processing industry had itself reached a stasis of consolidation that left Carol’s near corpse of the moment not only far too small to compete but also deeply in debt.
    The comforting thing was that the officers of the plant, all but one with the company for decades, had stayed through the corporate changes. These had been the local owners, and presumably they would have had a chance to pull out with both the Germans and the Japanese. Which told Carol that the owner-executives, and all the line workers, too (neighbors after all), might have a sentimental interest in keeping the company on an even keel as she dismantled and disposed. There were valuable physical assets, and she believed she could keep processing frozen fish, of which there seemed to be a fair amount, as she negotiated the sales of the lines and whatever else. It wouldn’t hurt to be able to tell buyers that the lines were operating. It wouldn’t hurt the locals to pocket a few more paychecks before the final severance.
    Carol could hardly believe this was her last burial. As she said that to herself again, something clicked into place. Baxter’s noise in the conference room had been his way of showing everybody that, after all her years as an undertaker, Carol was tough enough to take the heat as a CEO.
    Pine and fir began to green the roadside woods, and the sun was out, so she got off the freeway to drive the two-lane roads. She drove east and a bit north, as best she could determine. She drove without the clutch for the fun of it.
    When she crossed the short bridge over the