The Enemy Within
THE ENEMY WITHIN
Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?
—AbrAHAM LINCOLN
1985
Mercedes Baxter sat in her office just outside Harvey Khan’s executive suites, sipping tea and looking through the latest People magazine, when she glanced up and saw Beanie Rosen, the new departmental trainee, standing before her.
She’d been furious when she’d heard that they not only were keeping Beanie but promoting her to some ridiculous new position.
“What the hell?” she’d said, immediately appealing to Khan, who had little interest in Mike Barron’s secretary. There was enough on his plate, and he dismissed Mercedes’s complaints as petty jealousy, which was so deeply insulting and fundamentally true that she didn’t know how to respond.
“Lesser said she’s a keeper,” Khan told her, doubling down and adding that apparently it was Beanie who had been the lynchpin in signing Cage.
That, of course, made Mercedes’s head spin. She hated that Beanie had earned some exalted position to both Lesser and now Khan, effectively wiping out all the nasty rumors about her that Barron had tried to spread. Neutered, Mercedes was helpless to do anything more than watch as Beanie navigated a system designed to keep her out. Mercedes didn’t trust her. She never had.
And now Beanie Rosen was standing in front of her. To gloat? Perhaps. But there was something about her manner, her face, that made Mercedes let down her guard. A little.
“I’d like us to be friends,” Beanie said humbly. She had timed this visit with precision, asking Hawkeye to let her know when Khan had left for lunch, so there wouldn’t be an audience in case there was a scene.
Mercedes looked at her strangely, cocking her head from side to side like a parrot. “I thought we were friends,” she said, not at all sounding friendly.
“I hope so,” Beanie told her, earnestly adding, “and I’m sorry for anything I’ve done to make you think otherwise.”
Mercedes clocked Beanie for insincerity or sarcasm. “You said some pretty awful things.”
“I did,” Beanie said, solicitously. “And I’m sorry. I was angry about Ollie, and I blamed you. That was unfair. I really am sorry, Mercedes,” Beanie said.
They held each other’s gaze.
“Okay,” Mercedes said, and went back to her magazine.
That night Beanie felt utter and total relief. While she and Mercedes would never be friends, she believed and hoped that she had neutralized the threat and was finally out of her crosshairs.
“Honestly, it’s all because of Sheila Day,” Beanie said reverentially as Ella was eating a bowl of cornflakes. “She made me see that enemies from within can do more damage than anyone else.”
“Spare me,” Ella said, galled that Beanie was paying homage to a woman who had countless enemies everywhere. And Ella was one of them.
“What did she ever do to you?” Beanie asked.
Ella shrugged. “I don’t like her,” she said, recounting a call she’d heard where Sheila referred to Scott Westman, Garry Sampson, and Garry’s girl as the “Goys R Us” trio, telling Garry that they needed to get some “Jew” in there.
Beanie laughed. “She was kidding.”
“No, she wasn’t,” Ella countered. “She wants to represent Scotti.”
Beanie shrugged. “So? What’s wrong with that? She’s a legend.”
Ella picked up her bowl and walked away, saying it would never happen. “I don’t like her and neither does Scotti.”
Beanie was mortified. “You should not disparage Sheila Day to a client, much less Scott Westman,” she said, following Ella into the living room. “She was just making a joke.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t like her humor,” Ella said, relaying that Sheila came into the office the day before and told her that her skirt was so short she could almost see her cooch. “So, you know what I did?” Ella asked. “I spread my legs and said, ‘This any better?’”
Ella and Sheila had resented each other from the start. Sheila thought Garry’s girl was acting above her station and should be more deferential, and Ella thought Sheila, obnoxious and judgmental, was another form of all the women whom she’d rebelled against.
The feelings of dislike and distrust between these two women would not only grow but inform a trajectory that neither could have predicted.