Chapter Eight
That Moment When It All Becomes Clear
Eric
My crew and I show up for work, but the door is locked.
“You know…” José starts, but I interrupt with a quick shake of my head.
“You’ve really got to learn some patience, José,” I tell him. “Breaking in here is the reason why we’re working pro bono. Do you really want to know what’s going to happen if you do it again?”
‘Good morning, gentleman.’
We turn around to find Jessica standing behind us in a dress that hugs her hips.
Damn, she is looking fine.
“There’s been a little change of plans,” she says.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Well, it occurs to me that I’m not really going to be able to justify having you all continue to work when it’s so obviously driven customers out of the store. You said that you were close to being finished yesterday, correct?”
“Yeah,” I answer. “What you’re saying is—”
“What I’m saying is that I’m going to need you to finish up what you’ve got going now, and then I’m going to have to let you go. How long do you think that’s going to take?”
What the fuck? This way, that way, just finish up what you’ve got going and then I’m going to let you go. This woman changes her mind way too much. But she’s hot as hell.
“Well, I called my carpet guy, but he won’t be here until tomorrow—” I start.
“Would you mind giving him a call?” she asks.
“Why?”
“I just want to see if there’s any way we could turn that tomorrow into a today,” she says. “I really want to get this place looking like a clothing store, not a construction site.”
I sigh, pull out my phone, and dial Manny’s number.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Manny,” I start. “Hey, my client just wanted to know—”
Jessica pulls the phone from my hand and puts it to her ear.
“Hey, Manny,” she says. “I’ve got to get this project done today, so unfortunately, if you’re not able to accommodate that, I’m going to have to find someone that will.”
Oh, this is bullshit.
“You will? Great,” she says, hangs up, and hands me the phone. “He’ll be here in an hour,” she tells me. “It’s interesting what people will do for you if you apply just the slightest pressure.”
She is always so direct. I kind of fucking like it.
“That’s one of my business associates,” I tell her though. “You can’t talk to him that way. It puts me in a bad position.”
Her eyebrow rises.
Even though she’s not saying anything, her message is clear enough: if I hadn’t interfered with her relationship with one of her business associates, we’d be finishing up this job under very different circumstances.
“Why’d you change your mind?” I ask. “I know you said it was the customers, but that really hasn’t seemed to bother you before.”
“I care a lot about my customers and their impressions of my store,” she retorts.
“That’s not what I mean,” I tell her. “Up until this morning, you’ve gone about this whole thing as a necessary evil, that in order to improve the store, you’re going to have to accept that things are going to be a bit messy for a while. Besides, if you were really concerned with the customers’ impression about all the construction going on, you would have had me and the guys do our thing after you closed. In fact, that’s a question that nobody here has really gotten a straight answer to: why have you insisted that we only work during your business hours?”
“Well, based on some recent experiences, I’d say it’s a good thing that I did insist on that,” she says. “Yes, it would have been nice not to have to deal with you quite so much, Eric, but at least this way, I’ve been able to keep an eye on you. That being said, I’m not an unfair woman, and I’m not going to make you do extra work for free, so why don’t we get this finished up and get it finished up today, I’ll pay you the rest of what you have coming to you, and that’ll be that.”
“Guys?” I turn around and my crew disperses, giving Jessica and I a wider berth to talk. “What’s really going on? Yesterday, you were ready to kill me with my own power tools and today you’re Norma Rae. Something changed.”
“I just decided that revenge isn’t going to change anything, and that I’d rather have a finished store than the satisfaction of making you suffer,” she says. “There are more important things than watching you squirm.”
“Well,” I tell her, “whatever the reasons, I hope you do know that I really do apologize for the ways I’ve let you down since we started working together. You’ve been a complete nightmare, but that’s no excuse to—”
“Oh, I’ve been the nightmare?” she asks. “You said that you were going to have this whole thing done in a matter of a couple weeks, maybe three, and here we are, what, two months out? I just want to get this done. I wouldn’t look any further into it than that.”
She just betrayed herself. If it weren’t for the last sentence, she might have convinced me, but specifically telling me not to look any further into it tells me that there’d be something to find if I did.
“All right,” I tell her. “Only one thing left then, you know, apart from finishing up today.”
“Yeah?” she asks. “What’s that?”
“I owe you lunch,” I tell her. “I know that we haven’t really gotten along so well over the last stretch, but I really would like to follow through on that.”
“I don’t want to have lunch with you,” she says.
Getting turned down by the hot chick always stings. However, that doesn’t stop me from trying.
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t really want to have lunch with you, either, but it’s the civilized thing to do.”
If that doesn’t get her to let me buy her lunch, nothing will.
My motivations? Well, those aren’t worth going over unless she says yes.
“So you think we should both go to lunch with each other, even though neither of us wants to, just because it would be the civilized thing to do?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I answer.
One of the things she’s tried not to let show too much is just how much more civilized she finds herself than me. I’ve just called her out on it in a pretty direct way.
Let’s see what happens.
“All right,” she says. “What time?”
“Well, why don’t you open up so your people can get going and my men can get the project finished up and we can slip out in a few minutes?” I ask.
“It’s not even 9 in the morning,” she says. “How does that equate to being lunch?”
“Call it breakfast,” I tell her. “It really doesn’t matter. All I know is that I’d rather not go to some restaurant covered in sweat and sawdust, and I would imagine you’d rather not have that kind of lunch companion either.”
“You do make a good point,” she says. “All right, then, let me get everything going and we’ll pick up a quick bite.”
“Sounds great,” I tell her. I want to tease her, saying, “It’s a date,” but I resist the temptation. I’m on thin enough ice with her as it is.
Jessica goes and unlocks the door, and I lock eyes with Linda. She and her coworkers must have arrived somewhere during the discussion between Jessica and me.
The door’s open and Jessica heads to the register.
It’s the strangest ritual. Despite having cashiers that clearly know what they’re doing, big boss lady doesn’t even seem to trust them with something as fundamental as opening their own registers in the morning.
“Hey,” Linda says. “I hope this doesn’t disappoint you, but I just got back with my old boyfriend, so you and I are going to have to stop seeing each other.”
“That’s fine,” I tell her. “We agreed early on that this was just going to be a casual thing anyway.”
Truth be told, I am a bit disappointed. It’s not that I thought she and I had something serious, but it was nice to have someone to feel close to, if only as a casual thing, even knowing that it was only ever going to be for a little while.
Oh well. There’s always Jessica. With her attitude and body she must be amazing in bed.
Maybe that’s who I should go after.
“Okay,” she says. “I think it’d be great if we could stay friends, though. I don’t want you to think that I’m just tossing you out of my life entirely. Just, you know, the bedroom.”
I laugh. “You’re fine,” I tell her. “This is pretty much what we’d already agreed to, so don’t even worry about it.”
“Great!” she says. “Listen, Jessica’s done opening my register, so I’m going to get to work, but I’m glad we could talk.”
“Why does she do that?” I ask.
“Control issues,” Linda says. “I’m just surprised she hasn’t tried to tie my shoes yet. If anyone needed a long, hard, sweaty—Jessica, how are you this morning?”
Yup. Jessica is definitely Linda’s soon-to-be replacement. She just doesn’t know it yet.
“I’m fine,” Jessica answers. “Are you ready for today? It’s going to be a big one.”
“What’s going on today?” Linda asks.
Jessica looks at me and says, “Today, we get the store back.”
* * *
“Don’t you think we should be getting back?” Jessica asks.
“We haven’t even gotten our appetizers yet,” I tell her. “What’s the rush? It’s not like we’ve got a five-course dinner coming.”
“I just need to get back,” she says.
“Just relax,” I tell her.
“I don’t even know what we’re doing here.”
“I just thought it would be a good idea for you and I to sit down and see if we can work out some of our differences,” I tell her. “Things have gotten a little out of hand on both our parts.”
“Maybe so,” she says, “but what’s the point? After today, chances are you and I will never see each other again.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I tell her, “but don’t you think it’s nicer to part with lunch than just the memories of how we’ve screwed each other over in the last couple months?”
“I don’t really care,” she says, and starts to get up.
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve got to get back there,” she says. “What if we have a big client come in and I’m not there to answer their questions or help them find what they’re looking for?”
“That’s what your staff is for,” I tell her. “You can’t be there all day every day. Besides, it’s not like I’m asking you to take a whole day off, I’m just talking about the next 20 minutes to have some breakfast or lunch or brunch or whatever we’re calling this.”
“Twenty minutes?” she asks, now standing next to me. “That’s about 19 minutes longer than I can be gone from the store.”
There’s something familiar in the way she’s talking, but I’m sure it’s a coincidence.
“You work hard,” I tell her. “You need to eat. Otherwise, where are you going to get the energy to micromanage everyone and stress yourself out to the point of near-psychosis?”
“Yeah,” she says, “calling me crazy is going to really work for you here.”
“Just sit down for a minute,” I tell her. “The waiter’s coming with our appetizers. If you find yourself having a conniption before the entrees arrive, you can go.”
“You don’t get it,” she says. “If I’m not there, the store falls apart.”
She really is a control freak.
More than my ex was, but somehow, this trait always attracts me.
“I doubt you have any evidence to support that theory,” I tell her, “seeing as how you’re never not there.”
“Fine,” she says in a huff, resuming her seat. “But this isn’t leisure time. This is a business lunch.”
“All right,” I chuckle. “What business would you like to discuss?”
I’d expected the silence. What I hadn’t expected was that she’d actually pull out her cell phone, dial her own store and ask whoever’s on the other line if things are going all right, all the while assuring her employee that she’d “be right back.”
She hangs up, and I can’t stop smiling.
“What?” she asks. “I get that you don’t take your job seriously, but that doesn’t mean everyone else works the same way.”
“That’s hilarious,” I tell her. “I take my job very seriously. I just don’t fetishize it like you do. Do you have any idea how condescending and insulting that phone call was?”
“It wasn’t condescending at all,” she says. “They all know that I like to take a hands-on approach when it comes to Lady Bits.”
“You know, out of context, that would be hilarious,” I smile.
“Oh, ha ha,” she says, as a smile forms.
“And you’re right,” I start. “You just told your employee that you don’t trust her or any of your other workers enough to let them handle the store for 10 minutes, all the while assuring her that ‘mommy will be back soon.’ There’s nothing condescending about that at all.”
“You just don’t get it,” she says, shaking her head. “This is the way I work—it’s the way I’ve always worked.”
“I can tell,” he says.
“What is that supposed to mean?” she asks.
“Well, that’s a gray hair, isn’t it?” I ask. “You’re what? Twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”
“I’m 30,” she says. “And how exactly did you manage to insult me for being too young and too old in the same breath?”
I grin. She looks like she’s in her early 20s. Not a single wrinkle, and I can tell because her face isn’t plastered with makeup. Thank God. This way I know what I’ll be waking up to in the morning once I fuck her.
“I’m not saying you’re either too young or too old,” I tell her. “I think that you’re too stressed out, and it really shows in the way you deal with your employees and your customers.”
“How does it show to my customers?” she asks. “I have a spectacular game face.”
“You really don’t,” I tell her. “Remember last week when that woman came in looking for a new handbag? She made some stupid pun and you terrified pretty much everyone within range of your too-long, too-loud, wide-eyed laughter. You kind of looked like that kid in school who’s extra nice to everyone because she doesn’t know how to relate to people.”
“You know,” she says, “if you just brought me here to insult me, I really don’t see the point in continuing.”
“Before you use what I’m saying as a pretext to go lord over your staff and make everyone, especially customers, nervous, why don’t you just take a minute to have a bit of the onion rings?” I ask. “They’re pretty tasty, and you haven’t so much as looked at your food because you’ve been too worried about what may or may not be going on at the store.”
She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. When she opens them again, she hails a passing waiter and orders a double shot of whiskey.
As the waiter’s walking away, Jessica leans forward and says, “Look, I know I come off as overbearing, but I guess I just don’t trust that things would get done if I’m not there to oversee it.”
Oh shit.
Is there any way the woman I’ve been texting could be Jessica? I can’t imagine that would be possible.
That response, as I recall, is almost verbatim to what that woman told me last night during a similar discussion, though. I decide to test the theory.
“Your staff seems like they’re all perfectly capable women doing a great job for you. You’re acting like they don’t know Prada from Donna Karan and would just as soon kill and eat your customers as give them good service,” I tell her.
“Do you know Prada from Donna Karan?” she asks.
“Not even remotely. Really, I’m just proud of myself for remembering the names,” I answer.
She tries to hide it, but I can see that brief flicker of a smile come over her lips.
“They’re a good staff—great, really. Without them, I don’t know if I’d even have a store. They just don’t have that—oh, what’s the word?” she asks.
“Inside experience?” I ask.
She cocks her head a little and eyes me.
“That’s what most control freaks use as their justification for their control freakery,” I cover.
It’s her. It’s got to be her.
The wording’s different, but the idea is exactly the same. Add to that the knowing look she gave when I used the phrase “inside experience,” and I’m almost certain that I’m talking to the woman who’s been giving me something to look forward to after work for the last while.
“That’s a good way to put it,” she says.
“Then why don’t you train them so they’re less dependent on your being there to solve every problem? You’re not superwoman.”
“It’s not that easy,” she says, but doesn’t have anything to back up the statement.
“It’s precisely that easy,” I tell her. “When I saw how fast José learned what I taught him, I kept teaching him more. Now, if I were to die today—knock on wood—he could take over the business without even the slightest bit of difficulty. Not everyone has that ambition, but you’ve got a whole staff full of people who want to know the things you won’t let them learn.”
“Yeah, but what happens when I give away that information and they go open a competing shop across the street?” she asks.
“I’m sorry,” our waiter, coming seemingly from nowhere, asks, “is there something wrong with the onion rings?”
“Not at all,” I tell him. “We just got caught up talking.”
“Okay,” he says, “here’s your drink, ma’am.”
“Thank you,” Jessica says and downs it, immediately handing the shot glass back to the waiter.
The expression on his face is hilarious.
“Would you like another?” he asks nervously.
“No,” she says. “That one should do it, thank you.”
“All right,” he says. “Your entrees should be out momentarily.”
He walks away.
“Do you really think that your employees are going to open a store just to drive you out of business if you give them the super-secret handshake?” I ask.
“You never know,” she says.
“Do you have—well, of course you must know how much money it takes to open up a shop, even a small one, in New York. Do you pay any of your employees that well?” I continue.
“I pay my employees very well,” she says. “And I don’t think it’s really any of your business anyway.”
“Maybe not,” I tell her. “I just hate seeing someone run themselves into the ground when they don’t have to, but if you’re dead set on losing your store—”
“I’m not going to lose my store. What are you talking about?” she asks.
“Well, most employees are loyal to bosses who treat them with enough respect to let them move up in the world,” I tell her. “It’s the ones who think their bosses are trying to stifle their growth that end up putting a knife in your back.”
She laughs. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Okay, let’s say it doesn’t,” I start. “Let’s say that all of your employees are just thrilled to pieces that you don’t give them any more responsibility than you think they can handle, which from the look of things, isn’t that much. Now, you’ve killed whatever ambition they do have and you’ll end up with a situation where they actually can’t take care of things when you’re not there, so sick or healthy, injured or able, no matter what, you’re going to have to be there all day, every day for the rest of your life,” I tell her. “Or, at very least, until you decide that it’s just not worth the stress and you end up having to sell the company, but I really see you as being the type that would hang onto this sort of thing until your dying breath. Maybe afterward, if you catch a break with rigor mortis.”
“Here are your entrees!” our waiter, who must be the sneakiest tray jockey in the business, announces.
We both say thanks and he goes on his way.
“All right,” she says, finally picking up a utensil, “let’s say that I would like to have more free time, and that I do realize that means I’m either going to have to give my people the keys to the store—”
“Seriously, what is that?” I ask. “I’ve been around a lot of controlling people—worked for a lot of them, too—but I have never known someone who was so insecure about their business that they wouldn’t let at least one manager have the keys to the store.”
“Yeah, whatever,” she says. “What am I supposed to do, though? This is the only way I know how to do it.”
“It’ll take a bit of time to work that out of your system, and you’re such a—let’s call it a ‘special case,’ that your need to control will likely just take form in some other area of your life, but what I would suggest is that you start out by taking your most talented employee aside and make them assistant store manager,” I tell her.
“That’s quite a promotion,” she scoffs. “I don’t even have…” she starts, but stops talking and nervously forks her food.
“You don’t even have what?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says. “Don’t worry about it. So, where are you from?”
“Here,” I tell her. “I think you were about to tell me that you don’t have any managers. That can’t be true, can it?”
“Well, I’m always there when the place is open, so—”
“Good lord!” I exclaim. “Jessica, you’ve got to let your employees move up and take some more responsibility, or are you really so conceited that you don’t think anyone might know one thing a little better than you do?”
“What about you?” she asks. “I don’t see you with any—well, I guess you wouldn’t call them managers, but you know what I mean.”
“José’s my number two,” I tell her. “It’s reflected in his responsibility and his pay. Under him, I’ve got Alec, though I think I might have pulled the trigger on that one a little early. Yeah, I like the guy, but he’s pretty damn lazy a lot of the time. I can’t be everywhere, and the guys on my team each have different strengths, different areas of expertise. When I come across a situation that I’m not quite sure how to tackle, I’m comfortable asking the advice of one of my employees who has more experience with that given thing, or may have some insight that I’m lacking.”
“Well, it sounds like you lucked out,” she says. “I wish I had people in my store that would be willing to—”
“Ivanna knows shoes a lot better than you do. She’d be perfect as manager of that section,” I tell her. “Linda is probably half the reason you’ve got as many customers as you do have, because she has a way about her that people really respond to. Cheryl seems like she knows everything there is to know about dresses, skirts, pants, and blouses. She might be a great choice for assistant manager, or at least a floor manager. The rest of your staff, I haven’t really gotten to know so well, but they’ve all got their strengths, and the wine is dying on the vine. You’ve got to trust your people or they’ll never trust you.”
“You don’t think they trust me?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “I think most of them like you because you’re a pretty likeable person, you know, when you’re not being all neurotic and controlling.”
She’s still forking her food, but I have yet to see her eat anything.
“How do you know so much about my staff?” she asks.
“I’ve spent almost two months around them,” I answer. “I don’t have as much face time with them as I’m sure you do, but when you’re even casually around people, you can come to know their strengths pretty quickly.”
A smirk crosses her face. “I think you just don’t like the idea of an ambitious woman,” she says. “I think you’re so used to your world of testosterone and power tools that the thought of a woman who not only owns her own business, but runs it, is a threat to you.”
“That’s because you don’t know me,” I tell her, shoveling a forkful of food in my mouth. “I actually find your ambition to be one of your most attractive qualities.”
It’s super fucking attractive. I somehow always end up with chicks that don’t have much ambition at all, though.
“You find me attractive?” she asks. “Just like a man: the only compliment you people can give is when it has something to do with the idea of screwing the woman you’re giving it to.”
Duh. She must know she’s a goddamned bombshell.
“Now, there’s an unfortunate assortment of words,” I laugh. “No, what I’m saying is that I love people who are driven. It doesn’t matter, man or woman, I think the quality itself is attractive. Trust me, if I was hitting on you, you’d know it.”
“Oh would I?” she asks. “You’re that smooth, are you?”
“Quite the opposite,” I tell her. “I have a particular clumsy charm, but it’s hardly something that I’d call smooth. It’s more like how that kid with the thick glasses and the lisp endears himself to you when he gets his tongue stuck on the flagpole in winter.”
She smiles, and as she realizes that I not only explained, but demonstrated my point, her face goes a little red.
“Well, you do seem like the clumsy type to me,” she says.
“Not with everything,” I tell her, and look her in the eyes until her face reddens even more and she looks away.
“Now you’re hitting on me,” she says.
“Yep,” I answer quickly, and sit back in my chair. “I told you that you’d know it when it happened.” I take another bite of my omelette and add, “I think it’s great that you’re so driven, so focused. I just think it’s a shame that you don’t trust yourself or your staff enough to have a life outside of work. You should take up a hobby,” I tell her.
“Yeah?” she chortles. “Like what?”
“I don’t know,” I start, then, just to see how far I can push this without letting her know that I’m the guy in her inbox, I add, “maybe you should take up painting.”
Her eyes narrow a bit and I know what she’s thinking, but I know that I’m safe. The reason I know that is because, based on our interactions, she can’t begin to conceive of me as the guy writing those texts to her. She sees me as the aggravating contractor who screwed one of her biggest contracts.
She’s not wrong, but that’s not the whole story, either.
“Why painting?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” I shrug. “If painting’s not your thing, why not try music or antiquing? I hear philately’s pretty fun, though I can’t imagine why. Hell, start smoking pot. From what I hear, homemade bong crafting is quite the art.”
She laughs her first sincere laugh, I think, since I met her, and it’s disarming to see even this small a glimpse of a softer side to her.
“Maybe you’re right,” she says, and finally relaxes enough take a bite of something.
“I usually am,” I smile.
“You’re kind of arrogant, you know that?” she asks, but at least she’s smiling at me.