Montpelier glanced at the woman, who answered: “We’ve learned that it’s best to let B.F. have his little tantrums, Dr. Oxnard. It’s a survival technique.”
Her voice was low, throaty, the kind that would be unbearably exotic if it had just the faintest trace of a foreign accent. But her pronunciation was flat Southern California uninspired. Over the phone she had managed to sound warm and inviting. But not now.
“I don’t have a Doctorate, Miz... uh...” Oxnard grimaced inwardly. He could remember equations, but not names.
“Impanema.” She flashed a meaningless smile, like a reflex that went along with stating her name. “Brenda Impanema.”
“Oh.” For the first time, Oxnard consciously overrode his inherent shyness and really looked at her. Something about her name reminded him of an old song and a girl in an old-fashioned covered-top swimsuit. But Brenda didn’t look like that at all. She seemed to be that indeterminate age between twenty and forty, when women used style and cosmetics before resorting to surgery and Vitaform Processing. She had the slight, slim body of the standard corporate executive female who spent most of her money on whatever style of clothing was fashionable that week and got most of her nutrition on dates with over-eager young stallions. Good legs, though. Flat chested, probably: it was difficult to tell through all the ribbons and flouncy stuff on her blouse. But she had good legs and the good sense to wear a miniskirt, even though it wasn’t in style this week.
Behind those overlarge green glasses, her face was knotted into a frown of concentrated worry.
“Don’t get upset,” Oxnard said generously. “The laser system works like a charm. Finger and his New York bankers will be completely impressed. You won’t lose your jobs.”
Montpelier laughed nasally. “Oh, B.F. could never fire us. We’ve been too close for too many years.”
“What he means,” Brenda said, “is that we know too much about him.”
Pointing a lean finger at her, Montpelier added, “And he knows too much about us. We’re married to him—for better or for worse.”
Oxnard wondered how far the marriage went. But he kept silent as they reached the elevator, stepped in and dropped downward.
“It must make for a nerve-wracking life,” Oxnard said.
“Oh, no... the elevator’s completely safe,” Montpelier said over the whistling of the slipstream outside their shuddering, plummeting compartment.
“I didn’t mean that,” Oxnard said. “I mean... well, working for a man like Finger. He treats you like dirt.”
Brenda shrugged. “It only hurts if you let him get to you.”
Montpelier scratched at his beard. “Listen. I’ll tell you about B.F. There’s a lot more to him than you think. Like that time he kicked me down the elevator shaft...”
“He what?”
“It was an accident,” Brenda said quickly.
“Sure,” Montpelier agreed. “We were discussing something in the hallway; my memory’s a little hazy...”
“The chess show,” said Brenda.
“Oh, yes.” Montpelier’s eyes gleamed with the memory of his idea. “I had this terrific idea for a chess show. With real people—contestants, you know, from the audience—on each square. We’d dress them in armor and all and let them fight it out when they got moved onto the same square...”
“And the final survivor gets a million dollars,” Brenda said.
“And the Hospital Trust gets the losers... which we would then use on our ‘Medical Miracles’ show!”
Oxnard felt a little dizzy. “But chess isn’t...”
Brenda touched him with the fingertips of one hand. “It doesn’t matter. Listen to what happened.” She was smiling. Oxnard felt himself grin back at her.
Montpelier went on, “Well, B.F. and I went round and round on this idea. He didn’t like it, for some reason. The more I argued for it, the madder he got. Finally we were at the end of the hallway, waiting for the elevator and he got so mad he kicked me! He actually kicked me. He was taking Aikido lessons in those days and he kicked me right through the goddamned elevator door!”
“You know how flimsy the doors around here are,” Brenda quipped.
Before Oxnard could say anything, Montpelier resumed:
“I went bum-over-teakettle right down the elevator shaft!”
“Geez...”
“Luckily, the elevator was on its way up the shaft, so I only fell twenty or thirty floors. They had me fixed up in less than a year.”
“Les was the star of ‘Medical Miracles’ for a whole week... although he didn’t know it at the time.”
“And Bernard Finger,” said Montpelier, his voice almost trembling, “personally paid every quarter of my expenses, over and above the company insurance. When I finally regained consciousness, he was right there, crying over me like he was my father.”
Oxnard thought he saw the glint of a tear in Montpelier’s right eye.
“That’s the kind of man B.F. is,” Montpelier concluded.
“Cruel but fair,” Brenda said, trying to keep a straight face.
Just then the elevator stopped with a sickening lurch and the flimsy doors opened with a sound like aluminum foil crinkling.
Everything here happens on cue, Oxnard thought as they stepped out into the studio.
The laser system was indeed working quite well. Montpelier clapped his hands in childish glee and pronounced it “Perfect!” as they ran through the demonstration tapes, although Oxnard noted, from his perch alongside the chief engineer’s seat in the control booth, that the output voltage on the secondary demodulator was down a fraction. Nothing to worry about, but he tapped the dial with a fingernail and the engineer nodded knowingly.
