her stool and mine. Sitting down, she glared at my cigarette before making eye contact with the bartender. Late thirties or early forties, she was about six feet in her heels and wore the day’s female power clothes: dark-blue suit and, a white silk blouse with a floppy red bow tie. Her dark hair was pulled back, accentuating her Mediterranean features, perhaps Italian or Jewish. She wore horn-rimmed glasses and looked as astringent as the martini she ordered.
Looking into her purse, she said, “Damn, it was just getting good.”
“Misplaced something?” I asked.
“Left my book on the plane. And some guy in a blue suit and trench coat grabbed the last New Yorker before I got it.”
I had taken off my trench coat and was wearing a blue suit. “Must have been me.” I pushed The New Yorker over to her. “Borrow it or take it.”
“I’ll borrow it,” she said. “Where were you going?”
“San Francisco.”
“Me too. This is really too much. And the next flight is maybe sometime tomorrow morning. Three days in New York and now this. They aren’t paying me enough for the hassle, they really aren’t.”
“Who isn’t?”
“Growers and Ranchers Bank; I’m in their San Francisco office.” Growers and Ranchers was a large Los Angeles-based bank.
“I work for Universal Bank.” Universal was far larger than Growers and Ranchers, and San Francisco bankers thought Los Angeles bankers were polyester types more suited for the used-car lots.
“Really?” she said. “Quite a bank: arrogant, too big, and they’ve confused size with quality.”
“You don’t say.” I turned away to look around; the bar had filled up with commiserating travelers. I planned to keep my barstool for as long as I could. I wanted a cigarette, but that would have annoyed her more than she already was.
She thumbed through The New Yorker, looking at the cartoons, then laughed out loud before going to the back of the magazine for the movie and book reviews. I sorted through my magazines and settled on Gourmet.
Later the bartender stood in front of us: more drinks or move for thirstier people. We ordered another round.
“My name is Helen Jacobs.” She didn’t offer her hand. I introduced myself, and she said, “Romanovsky. That’s Polish, isn’t it?” My name has a Polish ring to it; she said something in Polish.
“I don’t speak Polish.”
“What, embarrassed?”
“No, I…”
“You look familiar. We met before?”
“We could have.” Banking was a small world, and San Francisco’s was tiny; Universal’s headquarters was four blocks from the Growers and Ranchers San Francisco head office.
“It will come to me,” she threatened. “Whereabouts in Poland did your family come from?”
“I’m not Polish.”
“Really? You look Polish; the blue eyes and straw-colored hair, I mean. So just what are you? Ukrainian? Russian?”
“Russian.”
“Oh dear! Everyone knows that Russians are more anti-Semitic than Poles.”
“Everybody knows that?”
“I’ve got it,” she said with a sly smile. “Several years ago, you tried selling Growers and Ranchers a loan.”
“Back then, I was in Universal’s Syndication Department.” When countries and large companies require loans that are beyond a single bank’s capacity to make, bankers form multibank syndicates that accommodate those customers. Through their Syndication Departments, banks also manage their risk exposures by selling loans to one another. “We participated with Growers on several loans,” I said, then mentioned the names of people I had worked with.
“Back then you were peddling crap from Bolivia to Thailand, and God knows where else. Talk about marginal deals. You were trying to convince Growers to buy into a Philippine deal—Bingo-Bango I?”
“It was Babuyan Copper Mines, Phase II, conceptually not a bad deal.”
“We stayed clear, not a dime. What happened to Bongo-Bongo II?”
“There were problems around the second year. The loan was restructured. The original estimates were overly optimistic, and copper prices are quite volatile.”
“So that was a good deal?”
“The loan was priced according to the discernible risk at the time. In the large sense, as you know, a good loan is one that gets paid. And since the rescheduling, Babuyan has been paying as agreed, I think.”
With a theatrical head shake, she said, “In other words, you were peddling that junk, knowing that it was questionable.” I lit a cigarette; she coughed and waved her hand at the smoke.
“The loan looked fine when I was shopping it around. And if bankers can’t figure out a good loan from a bad one, they’re in the wrong business, aren’t they?”
“Who took most of that loan?”
“The big Texas banks—look how well they’re doing.” It was a banking joke; the big Texas banks were falling apart at the time. She didn’t get it or didn’t want to. “And what do you do for Growers?”
“I’m the Human Resources officer in charge of Northern California. I was being rotated through the International Department back then.”
“Human Resources, that’s rich.”
“And you think HR is full of people who couldn’t make it as real bankers? Or are you going to tell me that bankers make the money, and HR doesn’t appreciate them, let alone reward them? Something like that?” She batted her eyes at me.
“Something like that,” I said, “but you’ve covered it. HR? Isn’t that a fancy name for Personnel Department? So let’s be honest, Personnel has become a woman’s domain—you know, more caring, more inclusive. All those soft, nonhierarchical traits women are supposed to bring to the table. Know what I think? I think that’s a bunch of pop-psychology crap.”
“Wait just a second,” she said.
“No, you wait. You started this. What a lovely job you have, counting and sorting the people beans: black beans, brown beans, white beans, female beans. But when your bank gets tired of a particular bean, it’s sent off to Personnel, and you fire them. No, sorry, fire is such a harsh, finite word. You probably say deselect or concluding an employment experience. I bet you’re so empathetic that you give them a great big hug on the way out, or do you give them a hanky first?” I batted my eyes at her.
Helen put her elbow on the bar and leaned her head on her hand. “It amazes me how quickly I’ve come to dislike you.”
Leaning my head on my hand, I said, “You know,
