Fortune Is a Woman by Francine Saint Marie

remarks such as the last one Venus had issued. In fact, she was still stinging from that crack, in part because what Venus implied felt true.
    Or if not exactly true, not exactly false.
    The situation that had erupted with Helaine over dinner with Dad had only deepened Lydia’s resentment. She couldn’t confront this when she was home, but high on her perch at Soloman-Schmitt she thought about these things extensively. Somehow it was all related. Vice and virtue and Venus. Her security and well-being. That of Soloman-Schmitt’s.
    Helaine Kristenson and Venus Angelo. They had, independent of each other and yet simultaneously, reduced her to nothing for nineteen days. Nothing but a seething woman. A furious woman. A woman scorned. What a release after that to have finally experienced orgasm again.
    Lydia sat at the end of the day in Paula Treadwell’s corporate compound, safe and secure there, at least for the time being. She was thinking, thinking, thinking. She thought about love. She thought about sex. She thought, with horror, about living without sex for nineteen days and how it had felt like an eternity. She thought it was frightening that Helaine and Venus were both somehow linked to this privation. She had been angry with both of them over it, but now she knew she was, in fact, only mad at Venus. Why that should be the case she couldn’t say, but she worried about it nevertheless, what that kind of low-grade, chronic fury might mean, and what it could be doing to her in the long haul.
    “Assistant VP Overseas, Ms. Beaumont.” This announcement stirred her from her thoughts.
    Paula’s assistants came with the job and she didn’t know them well or trust them. “Put her on line two. And close that door, please,” she said, waiting for it to be done before speaking.
    “Beaumont here.”
    “Greetings from Tokyo. Angelo here.”
    “Yes. How are things in Tokyo?”
    “Hopping. I’m supposed to return next week.”
    “Good, we’re expecting you. Is there anything wrong? Why are you calling?” Venus sounded normal. Playful even. Lydia braced herself.
    “Well…I was wondering what you would think if I extended my stay?”
    “Business or pleasure, Venus?”
    “Pleasure. Who’s we?”
    Pleasure. Lydia suppressed her annoyance. “We what?”
    “You said ‘we’re expecting you.’ Do you mean Soloman-Schmitt? Or you?”
    Lydia took a deep breath. Should she even ask?
    “Ms. Beaumont?”
    “Is this a client or…something other? This pleasure thing?”
    “No.”
    No. Just no. So she would have to ask if she wanted more information. Just tell her yes or no and be done with it. “Why have you called me, Venus?”
    “Because you’re the president. Remember?”
    Lydia put her hand through her hair, rested her forehead on the back of it. “Venus…?”
    “Lydia.”
    She needed her here. That need was not a vice. It was for the security and well-being of the state.
    “Ms. Beaumont?”
    “What is this about, Angelo?”
    “I…I shouldn’t say.”
    Rank and vile. Venus Angelo was a scoundrel. “I order you,” Lydia said through her teeth. “Tell me.”
    “Okay. It’s…um…about a woman.”
    She felt that in her chest.
    “Be my first time…as you probably know.”
    (I know only that I am the interim president of a Fortune 500 company. I am the interim president of a Fortune 500 company. This is beneath me. I am not going to react.)
    “Tell me you don’t want me to do it, Lydia. Tell me to come home.”
    “I’m…Ms. Angelo, I’m hanging–”
    “Tell me not to.”
    The interim president had a sudden urge to scream. And her womb ached. “Venus,” she said, her voice hushed, “I have no right to rule on this.”
    “I’m giving you the right, Lydia. So hit the ball.”
    Now she was angry again. At four women. That would include herself and the one in waiting for Venus. “Then stay if you must. I’m going to hang–”
    “Is that what you want me to do?”
    Want. She could feel hands