Some people will swear life runs on coincidence. Is it true? If so,
here's one for the history books. It's the tale of an old flame. Before
my ex-wife Joanna, before my later ill-starred adventure with Donna
Austen. The lady's name was Tamara Richardson, and she was a professor
at New York University. When I knew her, though, she was merely an
assistant prof with a shiny new Ph.D. At any rate, she was fresh out of
Columbia's graduate school and very much starting out. I was too. Best
I can remember, we met shopping for green groceries at Balducci's, just
up Sixth Avenue from my place, and we saw each other a few times. It
had to be at least fifteen years (how time flies) since our brief
episode.
Tam Richardson, however, was not easy to forget. There was a kind of
under-the-surface intensity about the woman that seemed always close to
the ignition point. When you were around her, you were always worried
somebody might accidentally light a match. However, she had no shortage
of men in her life, and eventually we each went our own way. Ships that
passed in the night. I never expected to hear of her again.
Things didn't quite work out that way, however. She started getting
famous, as a thorn in the side of America's lackadaisical corporate
management. Somewhere along the line, Tam Richardson had taken it upon
herself to single-handedly kick some overpaid ass in America's plush
boardrooms, and she wasn't trying to win any popularity contests doing
it. She was the kid in the story who pointed out the emperor had on no
pants, while everybody else was claiming his tux was a great fit. Guess
you can't fire somebody in academia merely for saying what everybody
knows to be true but doesn't have the guts to verbalize.