Free Death Benefits by Thomas Perry Page A

of women can only be better. At that time she could be well up the ranks, maybe vice president and regional manager of a big chunk of the country. Then, if there’s a certain combination of circumstances, she could end up running the company. She didn’t say what the circumstances were.”
    “It would help if she changed her name to McClaren.”
    Walker shrugged. “You’ll have to suggest it to her.”
    Stillman studied Walker as he said, “Actually, I think I know what she has in mind. Dynasties have a life span. She probably thinks that at some point, either there won’t be enough McClarens, or there won’t be the right McClaren. There could even be too many, so the stock is spread too thin among people who don’t know each other. A competitor could start buying up those shares. It doesn’t matter what it is. Each year brings the end closer.”
    “Really?” said Walker. “No more McClarens at McClaren’s? Then what?”
    “Hard times,” said Stillman. His eyes drifted around the room as he spoke. “The company loses money. This happens to insurance companies on a fairly regular schedule. Then you’ve got a bunch of people in the San Francisco office who are associated with the discredited practices or decisions that failed. And you have a woman—she’s only forty-four at this point—who has twenty-two years with the company and runs operations in some big, successful region. Because she’s been out of sight, nobody knows anything negative about her. She gets a phone call from the board of directors.” He suddenly returned his eyes to Walker. “How would you feel about that?”
    “Me?” Walker looked surprised. “You mean would I be jealous or something? I don’t think so. And I could think of worse people to work for.”
    “Really? Who?”
    “It’s just an expression,” said Walker. “I meant she was good, not that anybody else was bad.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” said Stillman. “Now I understand why she wasn’t interested in you. You’re a nagging boil that appeared on her ass after she bought a nonrefundable plane ticket.”
    “It’s nice to make an impression on people.”
    Stillman held up his hands. “Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure you’re a young woman’s fantasy. A delightful, spiritual companion on life’s highway who’s hung like a horse. But that’s all beside the point, isn’t it?”
    “It wouldn’t be to me.”
    “She’s whoring after strange gods.”
    “She’s what?”
    “It’s just a line from a book nobody reads anymore. What it means this time is that it wasn’t you she turned down. It’s men. And women: she can’t be a lesbian because that would be even harder to fit into the vision. If you’ve got a plan that’s sure to fail unless absolutely everything happens in a certain way, then you have to make it all happen that way. A boyfriend in the San Francisco office would be a deviation.”
    “I’m not sure if I’m supposed to feel better about this or worse.”
    Stillman raised his eyebrows, took a long draft of his mai tai, and stared contemplatively at the hull of the outrigger canoe hanging above the table. “I’d say that our humanity requires us to feel . . . bad. Which we will tomorrow while these drinks claw their way out of our systems.” He looked at Walker again. “You’re in the clear, ego-wise. You could have been the aforementioned paragon of virtues, and she would have skipped the concert.”
    “Then what are we sad about, precisely?”
    “Her. No matter how misguided the goal, we can’t help rooting for the determined little human animal who wants it. That’s why we watch people doing things like climbing Mount Everest—which, on the well-known one-to-ten Stanford-Binet stupidity scale weighs in at about a thirty—and actually, with shame and horror, admit to ourselves that we hope the little boogers make it.”
    “We don’t know that she won’t.”
    “The broken window tells us somebody broke into her