Good Sister, The Read Online Free PDF Page A

all the producers’ hit lists, the more important of them were in clear focus on hers. Pegasus Satellite Services was about to take a giant step into film distribution, routing live movies through the air in competition with copy prints shipped as freight in heavy cans. The company’s satellites could change the way movies got from the studios to the theaters, eliminating dozens of costly and time-consuming printing and duplicating processes. So, as each of her guests fawned over her, hoping to register his name and face, Catherine trained her dazzling smile on the few who produced films in bulk. It was a smile that Peter Barnes often called the company’s greatest asset.
    Catherine had made herself the exciting persona of a company that was boringly technical, and given visibility to a business that had no visible assets. She had left the technology and the operations in the capable hands of her sister and given herself over completely to the first rule of marketing: Put yourself where the money is. Pegasus was playing for big stakes, she had reasoned, so it had to play with the big players. She had set out to make herself known in all the boardrooms of global business.

    First were the charities; she lent her energies to Save the Children, the Fresh Air Fund, Doctors Without Borders, Make-A-Wish, and dozens of groups determined to end the endless hunger of East Africa. She even made the cover of a weekly magazine holding an emaciated Somalian child in her arms. She rubbed elbows with publishers, broadcasters, software gurus, computer mavens, university deans, and television clerics. She was invited onto the boards of a local exchange carrier, a television network, and a publishing conglomerate. Simultaneously, three telephone and data communications companies signed on to the Pegasus network.
    Next came the arts. She raised money for symphony orchestras, funded local opera start-ups, patronized obscure painters, and supported urban dance companies. She was photographed with the conductor of the New York Symphony, on the stage of La Scala, and surrounded by the Vienna Boys’ Choir. That put her shoulder to shoulder with old money, billions of dollars in residue from defunct steel mills and grown-over railroads. Three financial institutions brought her onto their boards, and she brought financial wire services and private banking networks into the Pegasus fold.
    Catherine managed her image carefully. Everything she did projected a keen business mind, a burning social empathy, and nearly imperial stature. She also mixed in a generous glimpse of cleavage and an occasional flash of thigh so that even when she wasn’t actively involved in a momentous occasion she could count on making the fashion pages and the gossip columns. She had been flattered when her advertising agency proposed making her the company’s spokesperson in television commercials and print ads. But, wisely, she had recognized that turning herself into a commodity was the worst thing she could do. The trick was in convincing everyone she met that he or she had a special place in her life.
    Hollywood had required a slight shift in her image. She took her long hair a shade or two lighter and let it blow a bit more freely. Her makeup became a tad more theatrical, with more red
in her lip gloss, deeper tones in her eye shadow, and blush to emphasize her perfect bone structure. She slipped her hourglass figure comfortably into a smaller dress size and added bare-midriff jeans to her wardrobe. The result was a younger, more casual version of herself, still intelligent, still sympathetic, still sexually provocative, but definitely less regal. She had moved to the left cusp of the horsey set, where it blended indistinguishably into the entertainment riffraff.
    Catherine kissed the cheek of each of her guests as they left, begging off invitations to join one group for a nightcap and another for a sunrise beach party. She had to get packed for her trip back to New