in an airline magazine spread about "America's New Achievers." No
escaping her. Between the lines, I got the definite impression she
hadn't really changed all that much over the years. She was around five
seven, high cheekbones, dark hair that looked like it could use a
brush, and eyes that made you think twice about giving her a lot of
bullshit. Reminded me of, say, the young Glenda Jackson with a heavy
spike of Debra Winger. For my money, though, she was just about ideal
in the female department. Trim bottom, nice little twist in her stride,
just enough cleavage to make you wonder. She didn't go out of her way
to advertise, but you figured the goods were on board. My recollection
in a nutshell? Tam Richardson was a better than average looker, damned
smart, and she knew no fear. None.
There was something about her, though, that always left people
puzzling. Where'd she come from? American, sure, but no way could she
have been corn-fed Midwest like her surname. The answer was, she had a
slightly more exotic, and probably painful, history than most of us.
Maybe that was part of the reason she always seemed to be a loner,
never went along with the crowd. The one time she'd tried that, it
hadn't worked. I got to know her well enough to hear a bit of the
story, but I'd sort of repressed the details.
Maybe I'd do well to come clean and admit I still thought about Tam
from time to time. What's more, I gleaned from the magazine piece that
she still lived right around the corner. Made me think briefly about
giving her a call, get together for a drink, the old days, etc. But I
finally decided I'd had enough high-spirited women for a while. Time to
mellow down. Why go looking for lightning in a bottle?
She'd always liked three things: good-looking men, telling the high and
mighty unpleasant truths, and interior design. Consequently it was no
great surprise that the magazine devoted a photo spread to her rambling
six-room apartment. The place was in one of those NYU-owned buildings
on the west side of Washington Square Park, and it was definitely a
knockout. She'd played off the old classic interior, a generously
proportioned thirties layout, turning it into an environment that
blended technology and design. Not for Tam, though, the utilitarian
"high-tech" look so trendy a few years back; no ugly "state of the art"
machines. It was eclectic--modernism here, deco there.
Take her library-office. I smiled when I noticed that next to the
latest IBM PC was a "streamlined" Raymond Loewy- designed calculator,
pure thirties. Same old Tam. On the other hand, just to keep it all
from getting too serious, she also had a collection of kitschy salt and
pepper shakers scattered among the books--a dog peeing against a
hydrant, a naked babe with spicy boobs . . . she told the writer it was
her "tribute to America."
The place was everything she was, a potpourri of the world, a mishmash
of styles, and she clearly loved it. I probably missed a good half of
the insider gags, this outrage up against that one, but I must say she
brought it off with appreciable _elan_. Truthfully the place was a
perfect reflection of the Tam I remembered--a woman who did her own
thing.
She was now, so it said, a full professor at the university.
Undoubtedly she deserved it. She was also director of their new Center
for Applied Technology, which she'd founded. When the interviewer asked
her which department the Center was under, she'd apparently shrugged
and said "certain people" at the university wanted to bring it in under
the School of Business. But the Center had outside funding, was doing
vital work, and she was darn well going to stay independent.
Whoops. That ballsy crack, although perfectly in character, meant she
was now giving the back of her hand to university politics. Mouthing
off in a national publication about some departmental power play is no
way to endear yourself to college deans. It lays bare all their petty
empire-building. Didn't seem to worry her, though; just like in the old
days, she said exactly what she was thinking and let the chips tumble.
Her major occupation in recent years, as anybody who reads the op-ed
pages around the country knows, was to shame American executives into
getting off their duffs, to make them start diverting some of their
executive perks into the serious problem of getting this country
competitive again. She had plenty of ideas where the corporate-jet
money could be better invested. Over the years she'd knocked out half a
dozen books on technology and the American workplace--office automation,
computer-aided design in engineering, robots and computer-integrated
manufacturing, that kind of thing. Tam Richardson still believed
America could whip the world, but it would take more than speeches and
flag waving. Her latest expose of America's corporate fat cats, which
actually got a sidebar in the story, claimed they'd better start
cutting their million-dollar salaries and putting the money into
creating American jobs, or we'd all soon end up fetching coffee for the
new Pacific Rim dynamos and buying our goodies at East Asia's company
store.
Only she didn't bother to say it that nicely. Worse than that, the book
actually supplied a long list of America's more notoriously overpaid
CEOs. I suspect there were a lot of corporate contributors to the
university who'd just as soon seen her muzzled. Good luck, Tam.
Now the coincidence. The Saturday following my Friday night episode
with the inscrutable president of Nippon, Inc., an event occurred that
would soon bring Tam Richardson back into my life. Random luck? Fate?
Anybody's guess. As it turned out, however, while I was on the phone
leaving messages at country clubs for the building's attorneys, a mere
five blocks away from my place Dr. Tamara Richardson was putting the
final touches on preparations for an evening dinner party--destined to
throw us together again only weeks later.
The dinner was supposed to be strictly social, to celebrate the
beginning of her sabbatical--academic talk for a year off with three-
quarters pay. There were a few dinner debts to square away, so the
timing was perfect. She had several articles lined up; she'd finally
axed a stormy year-long affair with a colleague in Economics named
David Mason; and she was scheduled to begin a book on intelligent
robots. She was trying not to think too much about academic politics
and the real possibility her department chairman might consign her to
some kind of academic hyperspace, there to teach freshmen for the rest
of her tenured days.
By mid-afternoon she was down to the last-minute refinements on the
evening's plans. Since the overnight rain had purged the soot from the
air, she was feeling great. She put on a new Vangelis CD, worked a few
modern-dance moves into her routine as she cleared the loose books out
of the living room, and continued trying to convince herself that
breaking off with Dave Mason had been a smart move. After a while,
though, she wasn't humming anymore, just thinking. Okay, it had only
been a week, but why had she invited him to come to the dinner? Just to
be a good sport?