Free The LeBaron Secret by Stephen; Birmingham

me.”
    â€œNo, she was just acting up. Just being cute. Just seeing how much she could get away with—she and George Hessler. And I’m sure as hell George had something to do with it. Must have. She let him do it because she thinks he’s cute.”
    Marylou Chin laughs softly. “Well, he is pretty good-looking,” she says. “But after all.”
    â€œNo,” he says, “she’s always been like this, I’m afraid, M’lou. As long as I’ve known her. Which of course is all my life.”
    â€œWhat about when your father was alive? Was she the same way with him?”
    He frowns. “That was a little different. They were more like a working partnership. In business together. Dad was a smoothie, Mother was the toughie. When heads needed to get banged together, that was Mother’s job. They came to Dad to apply the Band-Aids. That was what he did best, smoothing over the hurt feelings Mother left in her wake.”
    â€œPoor Eric,” she says again. “It just hurts me so to see what she’s doing to you!”
    â€œA working partnership, that’s what that marriage was. You know, sometimes I’ve tried to imagine my mother and my father fucking, and I just can’t. I just can’t picture the two of them—you know, making love. Fucking. And yet they must have, two or three times at least.”
    They sit in silence for a while, and very slowly Marylou Chin stubs out her cigarette. “Well, I know what I think you ought to do,” she says finally.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œConfront her. Tell her exactly what you think. It’s wrong for you to keep your thoughts and feelings bottled up like this. I think you should go to her and tell her that you don’t intend to take this kind of treatment anymore. Give her an ultimatum.”
    â€œHa,” he says. “What good would that do? She’d just say, ‘Fine, get out.’ And then where’d I be? Out on the street, without a job.”
    â€œBut she’d be a fool—an absolute fool—to let you go!”
    â€œBut don’t forget, I know her, M’lou. I know her much better than you do, and I’ve known her much longer. I know her, I tell you.”
    â€œWell, even if she were foolish enough to let you go—why, there are dozens of companies that would be just dying to snap you up, all over town!”
    â€œYou don’t understand,” he says. “This is my career. I’m nearly forty years old, and I’ve worked for this company for half my life. I’ve made this company my career. Even summers, home from college, I was out there with the braceros, picking grapes, getting paid by the box lot, working for Baronet. It’s the only job I’ve ever had.”
    â€œBut there are plenty of other—”
    â€œIf she were mad enough, and she might well be, she could see to it that no other winery in California would hire me—ever. She has that kind of power, M’lou. I’ve seen her use it.”
    â€œIt’s—inhuman, is what it is!”
    â€œThat’s my mother. No, I’m afraid that isn’t the solution.”
    â€œBut even without a job, you’d have—”
    â€œMoney, you mean?”
    She hesitates, biting her lower lip. She is skating on thin ice here. As his secretary, she manages his personal checkbook, makes periodic deposits and withdrawals for him. But of his overall financial picture she knows little, and she is, after all, only his secretary. She decides to make light of things. “Well,” she says easily, “the newspapers always include you in the list of San Francisco’s wealthiest men.”
    â€œA regular Gordon Getty, eh?”
    â€œNo, I simply mean that—considering who you are, with your talent and brains—you could do anything you wanted in this city.”
    â€œYeah.” He is frowning now, looking not at her, but