Mavis Lamb Needs Geologist for Oregon Gold Mine
by Ann Cassin
Part 2 of 4
Mavis bought Galaxy Mining, Inc. for about five million dollars. That amount was a drop in the bucket for a Lamb. Duke figured Mavis was worth about a million dollars for every pound of her weight: Duke supposed it totaled about 277 million right now, give or take a mill. She liked to watch TV nude and Duke totted up the money as her great rolls of flesh shimmered in the flickering light of the old black and white 1940s movies she enjoyed. In fact, he was always amazed at how solid she was: corpulence was not caducity where Mavis was concerned.
Duke thought it had been very exciting when Mavis bought Galaxy, but he wished she had consulted him before she bought a condo in the Great Ocean Thundercloud in the Sky Center, thirty floors up, overlooking the Vancouver Stock Exchange. Duke suffered from vertigo and spent much of his time up there in his office, a converted walk-in closet.
He was backing into his closet now, eyes shut. It was windowless and it was also out of the heat flow and he shivered as he staggered backward to his desk. Besides his glasses, he had lost his favorite sweater on that Oregon trip. He reached down and pulled a fifth of vodka he kept in the bottom drawer, and glugged a swig or two. That one was almost a dead soldier, but not to worry, he had a fifth in every drawer, plus he kept some quarts of brandy in his file boxes on the closet shelving.
Everything about the Vancouver Exchange had intrigued Mavis: the location just over the border from the US with its highly flexible regulations if you knew how to conduct your crossing. In Vancourver itself were endless listings of companies starting up for the sole purpose of selling stock shares for pennies. Most companies were a rumor and a telephone organization. And, like Galaxy, many such arrangements were gold mining enterprises and that was half the fun.
Duke had always thought people bought gold as a secure haven, but since he had been in Vancouver, he had learned it was the ultimate get-rich-quick investment: people bought into gold companies, hoping for the big strike, the ultimate nugget, the zoom up in gold prices, anything that would multiply their money overnight whether it was the stock market or even bullion itself.
They bought gold stocks on the Vancouver market on tips from friends, watched their issues climb from 75 cents to $1.50 or if they got in at $1.50 watched the company evaporate before their eyes. This was raw capitalism, companies created simply for moneymaking: there was little production of any kind. Vancouver companies sold timing. The only people who eliminated the guesswork were the company owners, like Mavis, who would decide herself when she’d sell and fold. Duke guessed the lust for this sort of caper ran in Mavis’s blood, part of her heritage as the heiress of Specific Pacific Medical, a national plastic surgery franchise, originated by her father in Palm Desert, California.
Of course, Mavis’s new weight requirements for employment at Galaxy weren’t possible with the evening Chinese shift. None of them would have qualified. Oh well, Duke told himself, tonight Mavis was probably just trying to let them all know that they couldn’t snitch an extra few minutes because it was a Friday.
Mavis’s talent and interest was in noting the details: nothing was too small or mean for her attention. So, Duke thought, if she wanted to devil the Chinese contingent with an example from the top, then let her sit there with them. The Oriental shift which came on at 6 p.m. was not devious about their use of time. Ms. Emily Wu (a solid 105-pounder) captained the telephone bank for Hong Kong as if it were a warship on a mission. And considering Ms. Wu’s considerable talents in this arena (she was a retired Navy admiral) and as he and Mavis had been there all day with the East Coasters who started at 5 am, the West Coasters who started at 1 p.m., Duke wished Mavis had put off this demonstration of Friday diligence until next week.
It had been a long week. The thought of it made Duke close his eyes again. He took another slug of vodka. All the telephoning had netted them fifteen new investors who would tour the Galaxy Mining Oregon holdings on Sucker Creek and Spirit Mountain in October.
These new investors plus the stock sales in Hong Kong of several thousand shares were nothing to sneeze at. Tonight Duke had been hoping for a break with some seafood in Captain Jack’s down at street level. Fortunately, Vancouver was usually in a fog as it was tonight, and, fortunately, Duke couldn’t see the street down there even with his eyes open (he admired the brass of the owners of Great Thundercloud for naming the place so appropriately). He took a third hit and was now feeling much better: he was almost serene.
Duke stretched himself in his cold metal chair and contemplated the pending detached retina. When the tissues of his inner eyeball parted, Duke was thinking he would sit perfectly still while now he reached down without moving his head to set off the blinking telephone for the assistance of Ms. Emily Wu. He would wait without moving his head until Ms. Wu had summoned a policeman or a doctor, anyone but Mavis, for some support. He would not be brave about it. Instead he would get all the attention he could command from Ms. Wu and he thought she would think he looked strong if he sat like a wooden Indian, staring straight ahead until they had rolled him into surgery where he would have to face the laser beam.
Here his imagination began to fail him because Duke couldn’t bear the thought of anyone touching his eyelids or any other part of his eye. In a moment of weakness, Duke had told Ms. Wu about his retina fears. She had responding by telling him about her father who had already undergone a laser operation for a detached retina. Her father had had to sit for 45 minutes while the laser tacked the retina onto the back of his eyeball. And, she had said, no anesthetics. She also told him he would be strapped into a holding contraption that stretched his eyes open until he thought they were going to pop out. Duke broke his pose and shook his head and breathed. He opened a new bottle of vodka in the next up drawer.
Now, finally, Duke tried to face the thought of what they were going to do about Rosie. The day after Mavis had bought the controlling interest in Galaxy Mining, Inc. she had advertised for a geologist.
Duke downed another shot and told himself he had loved Rosie, the woman was positively burned into his soul. But, nevertheless, he had always known Rosie meant trouble: but Mavis wanted to hire her.
Mavis’s only reading material was the New York Times and she claimed Rosie had answered an advertisement which she had placed on the front page of the Times, a one-liner, ‘MAVIS LAMB NEEDS GEOLOGIST FOR OREGON GOLD MINE,’ plus her telephone number. She didn’t want any geological technician. She was after someone who could really get into the smell and feel of
