After Leslie Waller

(to be continued)

Virginia Clary and Woods Palmer sat in silence until the waitress had moved away.

“You’re a second-generation banker,” she said.

“Third. My grandfather founded the bank.”

“None of us were quite sure why you were chosen over the heads of some of the old-timers around the shop, or a man from another New York bank who knew the local set-up. But 1 begin to see the logic of the choice.”

“The usual move,” Palmer explained, “is to pick a man who’s a senior partner in the law firm that represents the bank. The future of the world belongs to lawyers, anyway.”

“They picked you against a trend?” She thought for a moment. “I doubt it. I think they wanted somebody with banking in his blood.”

“I imagine I’ll have to take that as a compliment.” He sighed. “There’re a lot of things about being chosen by Ubco that still haven’t been answered to my satisfaction.”

“Such as?”

Palmer shrugged slowly. “Technical things,” he parried, unwilling to let the matter go any further. It was easy enough, he told himself, to let pleasant conversation with an agreeable dinner partner spill over into the exchange of confidences that weren’t meant for exchange. He glanced up at Virginia Clary. Not, he decided, that she’d divulge many confidences about herself. She looked too intelligent for that.

“If you’d —”

“Which reminds me,” Palmer cut in, determined to get away from his previous words, “we haven’t even begun making a dent in your colossal mound of banking ignorance.”

Her eyes widened in mock chagrin. “I’m beginning to feel like a terrible liability to the firm.”

“Take comfort from the fact that you probably know more than most of the people in the shop.”

“I know about interest rates and personal loans and amortization and the Federal Reserve and like that,” she rattled off. “What am I missing?”

“As we say in public relations, the Big Picture.”

Palmer looked up as the waitress brought their coffee. He watched Virginia Clary add cream and sugar and stir it with slow, full sweeps of the spoon. “Something I said before,” he began then. “About money being as important to modern man as air and food. That’s the frame of reference you have to understand.”

“Believe me, no one has to explain the importance of money to me.”

“Let’s call it the necessity of money,” he amended. “There are still places on earth where you can trade a dozen spearheads for a side of dried beef. But they’re not the places where history and progress are being made.”

“These miserable bartering folks have no A-bombs or moon rockets.”

He looked up at her. “You are baiting me again.”

“Sorry. Mother’s influence. I really do want to know.”

“Fine.” Palmer sipped his coffee and found it good. “As we get a more highly organized society, money begins to become more important than any­thing else. Eventually, we reach the stage we’re in now. Money buys a man the food he eats, the clothes on his back, care when sick, the roof over him, his education, his recreation, everything. Without money, he can’t even die properly, unless he wants to lie in Potter’s Field. It’s become that sharp a def­inition: without money, man cannot live or die with decency.”

“Is that good?”

“Probably not,” Palmer said. “But we are not philosophers, we’re bankers. We supply, safeguard, control and define the most precious com­modity of life — money.”

“More precious than anything?”

“Suggest some other commodities.”

“Health?” she asked.

“Preserved and recovered through money.”

“I see. And things like, oh, love or hate. Money buys them.”

Palmer hunched himself forward until both his elbows rested on the small walnut table. “Try to understand that we’re not conducting a philosophical analysis. A man can live without love or hate. Without friends. Without the grat­ification of desires. But he cannot live, on the material plane, without money.”

“That’s only one plane of living,” she demurred.

“It’s the life-or-death plane.”

“Yes, but I want to get that on the record. It’s only in the material scheme of things that money is the most important.”

“All right. Granted.”

She eyed him closely. “You’re patronizing me,” she said then. “You don’t, for a moment grant that life has any other plane than the material one.”

“Not for the purposes of this discussion, at any rate.”

She shook her head almost sadly. “You’re a very hard man to trap,” she admitted. “I’d hate to interview you for a newspaper.” She watched him for another moment and then gave up. “All right,” she said. “We’re bankers. We aren’t interested in anything but the material world.”

Date: 2015-07-17; view: 506; Нарушение авторских прав