Page 57 of Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

“I read your paper on punitive taxation.” Jane lifted her chin toward the bartender, silently requesting another drink. “If you’re wondering, Father expects us to keep up with his professional life. Even from nearly six thousand miles away.”

“How edifying.”

“I’d say it’s more alarming than edifying. He sneaks his clippings into my mother’s letters to save postage. ‘Dear Daughter, we attended supper with the Flannigans this weekend and please be prepared to answer questions pertaining to the enclosed abstract on macroeconomic variables in Nicaragua.’” Jane watched the gin fall from the bottle. The bartender was being more generous with the alcohol than he’d been with Laura, but beautiful young women always got more.

Jane said, “Your passage about the weaponization of financial policy against minorities really made me think about government in a different way. Though, to hear my father tell it, your type of social engineering will ruin the world.”

“Only for men like him.”

“Be careful.” This was a serious warning. “My father does not like to be contradicted. Especially by women.” She met Laura’s gaze. “Especially by women who look like you.”

Laura remembered something her mother had told her a long time ago. “Men never have to be uncomfortable around women. Women have to be uncomfortable around men all of the time.”

Jane gave a rueful laugh as she stubbed her cigarette into the ashtray.

Laura motioned for another gin and tonic, though the first one sat sourly in her stomach. She needed her hands to stop shaking, her heart to stop pattering like a frightened rabbit.

The clock gave her only thirty minutes to prepare herself.

In the best of circumstances, Laura had never been a comfortable public speaker. She was a watcher by nature, preferring to blend with the crowd. Behind Iacocca’s keynote, the Queller panel was expected to be the most well-attended of the conference. The ticket supply had been exhausted within a day of the announcement. There were two other men who would join them, a German analyst from the RAND Corporation, and a Belgian executive from Royal Dutch Shell, but the focus of the eight hundred attendees would be squarely on the two Americans.

Even Laura had to admit that Martin Queller’s C.V. could draw a crowd: former president of Queller Healthcare, professor emeritus at the Queller School of Economics, Long Beach, former advisor to the governor of California, current member of the President’s Council on Economic Development, at the top of the shortlist to replace James Baker as Secretary of the Treasury, and, most importantly, progenitor of the Queller Correction.

It was the Correction that had brought them all here. While Alex Maplecroft had managed to distinguish herself first at Harvard, then Stanford and Berkeley, she would have likely lived in academic obscurity but for her writings and publications accomplishing something that no man dared: vehemently questioning the morality of not just the Queller Correction, but Martin Queller himself.

Given Martin’s standing in the economic and business community, this was tantamount to nailing the Ninety-Five Theses on the church doors.

Laura gladly counted herself among Maplecroft’s converts.

In a nutshell, the Queller Correction posited that economic expansion has historically been underpinned by an undesirable minority or immigrant working class that is kept in check by nativistic corrections.

The progress of many on the backs of an other.

Irish immigrants erecting New York’s bridges and skyscrapers. Chinese laborers building the transcontinental railroad. Italian workers fueling the textile industry. Here was the so-called nativistic correction: Alien Land Laws. No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs. The Emergency Quota Act. The Literacy Act. Dred Scott v. Sandford. The Chinese Exclusion Act. Jim Crow. Plessy v. Ferguson. The Bracero Programs. Poll taxes. Operation Wetback.

The research behind Martin’s theory was well substantiated. One might even call it a summation of facts rather than an actual theory. The problem—at least according to Alex Maplecroft—was that the Queller Correction was being used not as an academic term to describe a historical phenomenon but as a justification for setting current monetary and social policy. A sort of “history repeats itself,” but without the usual irony.

Here were some of the more recent Queller Corrections: less AIDS funding to thin out the homosexual population, harsher sentences for African American crack users, regressive penalties for post-conviction felons, mandatory life sentences for repeat offenders, the for-profit privatization of prisons and mental health facilities.

In a Los Angeles Times op-ed, Alex Maplecroft derided the thinking that went into the Queller Correction with this inflammatory line: “One wonders if Hermann Göring swallowed that cyanide capsule after all.”

“Doctor?” Jane pulled Laura out of her thoughts. “Do you mind if—”

The girl wanted another cigarette. Laura shook two out of the pack.

This time, the bartender had a light for both of them.

Laura held in the smoke. She watched Jane watching the mirror. She asked, “Why did you give up performing?”

At first, Jane did not answer. She must have been asked the same question dozens of times. Maybe she was preparing to give Laura the same pat answer, but something altered in her expression as she turned in her seat. “Do you know how many famous women pianists there are?”

Laura was no musical expert—that had been her husband’s hobby—but she had the tickling of a memory. “There’s a Brazilian woman, Maria Arruda, or...?”

“Martha Argerich, from Argentina, but well done.” Jane smiled without humor. “Name another.”

Laura shrugged. She had not technically named one.

Jane said, “I was backstage at Carnegie, and I looked around and realized I was the only woman there. Which had happened before, many times, but this was the first time that I had really noticed. And that people noticed me.” She rolled the ash off of her cigarette. “So then my teacher dropped me.” The sudden appearance of tears at the corners of her eyes indicated the girl was still stung by the loss. “I’d trained with Pechenikov from the age of eight, but he told me that he had taken me as far as I could go.”