Chapter 11 A Little Cat Fight, and Life Goes On.
Musical Theme; Superstar by Sheryl Crow
According to the news, our little sweetheart had gone to Sicily, and shared her considerable charms with a gentleman who had another to whom he had promised the various things one promises. That gentleman’s wife had whacked the heck out of poor misunderstood Marcie with, fortunately for the fashion industry, a light saucepan, rather than something like the cast iron or edged implements which had been present, and ever so beloved to the Sicilian soul, kind and wonderful people that they are. The doctors opined that a little makeup would cover it for now, and The Most Beautiful Woman in the World would look just as good as ever in a few weeks.
Marcie apologized for the ‘misunderstanding’, gave tremendous amounts of money to charity, and an enormous collection of shoes to the offended lady. There was no need for Will to explain to her that one does not do that sort of thing in Sicily. Apparently, Marcie even knew not to poke polar bears with sticks, but one could not be sure. What went on in her mind was a mystery to the rest of humanity, and perhaps part of her charm.
Will and Chrissie met up with her in Corsica, another place where she would be well advised to be on her best behavior, the Corsican concept of dishonor or disrespect being closely linked with violence.
Will might have tried to explain such concepts to Marcie, but it seemed more or less useless. He merely hoped the next time it was in Paris, Amsterdam, or if it was with another woman, perhaps San Francisco. Luckily she had done it in Sicily where you might get killed for something like this, rather than South Central Los Angeles, where you would get blown away, no problem, no questions asked, nobody saw anything.
Pauli Nathan Phillipa, having an assured supply of product, wanted to turn up the heat while the fire was going well. He chartered a 178 foot yacht, and sent Marcie to the Greek islands. They went all over the Aegean, and made ports of call in Turkey and Crete.
They went through the Dardanelles and up to Istanbul. Once there, why not the Bosporus and visit the East Coast of Bulgaria and Romania? The Black sea was “Really pretty.” Odessa was “One of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen.” She visited Sardinia, and then the South of France, where she was so popular that the police were terrified about riots. She continued counting catalogs by the pallet. In Marseille, trucks dropped pallets of catalogs on the street, and they were stripped clean. In Paris, they went crazy. There was no question of catalogs. There were none. Phillipa shoes were close to unobtainable. They went by the railcar out of Minnesota, and they were gone. Pauli looked at the exhaustion of his point model and photographer, and called them home. The sensation was slowing to a plateau with Phillipa at an enviable spot in the women’s shoes market.
They met at the corporate headquarters in Milano. “You have done it, my angels. If you work any harder, you will die from it. We have been to the peak, and it’s time to stop. If I let my workers keep pushing, I will see industrial sewing machines putting needles through people’s hands. And things even worse. I will not. I answer to my stockholders, but I also answer to God. Phillipa will go on, and my workers will send their children to my office asking for jobs that will be there for them. Phillipa owes the printers for catalogs, the tanneries, and everyone who has supplied us and worked for us. We will have the money to pay everyone in full, and much more. We will be fine.
“Like Will, I am partly a socialist. We believe in one thing but we do another. We have made a tremendous amount of money, and I intend to share it. Phillipa is and will continue to be a kind company that treats people with the respect a human being should have. I do not take pride in that because that is what I should do. I give nothing away when I do right.”
“Nor do we.”
“I’ve put the posters on the Gulfstream. Go home, Will. Sign the posters but don’t wreck your wrist, Marcie. That container that has Phillipa painted on the side of it at your niece’s lot…We’re charging a dollar a year for the next 50 years, and that is non-negotiable.”
* * *
They came back to Oregon, and the ice was gone. They went to dinner with Hank, Carol, Chrissie, Alan and Marie. After dinner, a car came and took Marcie to the airport, and the Gulfstream took her to Louisiana.
Chrissie watched the Gulfstream jump into the air. “I wonder what it would be like to be Marcie.”
“I wouldn’t be Marcie for all the pigs in Kansas, Chrissie.”
“I wouldn’t either, Will.”