Dalton
On the way to her father’s place, Penny looks more and more uncomfortable. “My dad is really weird.” I’m surprised she’s so concerned what I’ll think of him. “Like really quirky. Most people don’t get his humor. I’m just warning you now.”
“I’ve been warned,” I say flatly, not worried at all about it. I can deal with anyone. I have a hard time, though, believing the man who raised Penny is all that bad.
“He’s a good man who was shaped by a very hard thing that happened.”
“What happened?”
“His sister, Julie, died of cancer when she was in her early thirties. I’m sad to say I hardly remember her. But the parts I do remember shine in my mind.”
“Your dad was close with her?”
“They were best friends. Before she got sick she was living her life to the fullest. Every second. She would get a job, then quit it every summer so she could spend time with her kids. Julie was the last person in the world whose life should have been cut short. There were a million things she’d have accomplished if she had lived. When I’m feeling off-center I take flowers to her grave and talk until I find my way.”
I nod as though that makes sense to me, but the idea of talking to a headstone to make myself feel better seems strange. So instead I just wait for her to go on.
“My father was devastated. Her passing sent him into overdrive. It was no longer about money. Success meant minutes spent doing something that put good energy into the universe. My mother was already leaning the other way. She was climbing the corporate ladder. She was making more money than he was. It ended up being enough to split them up. My mother was the last thread holding my father to social norms.”
“She left him for being a philanthropist?”
“No.” She turns to look out the window. “She left him because he took all their savings and bought goats for a village in Africa. He sold off their furniture and turned the proceeds into a makeshift food pantry for the poor in our tool shed.”
“Damn.”
“When I was little, I thought my dad was a saint and my mother was a demon. Didn’t she want to feed the poor? Didn’t she care about her fellow men? What I realized as I got older was my mother wasn’t a monster, she just wanted to make sure we were taken care of too. But I’m gushing now. I just wanted you to have some context. My father is a good man. He just misses his sister and wants to honor the life she didn’t get to have. I don’t want you to be blindsided.”
“I’m good, Penny. I deal with people all day. Business is business. Don’t stress about it.”
“Oh, and my father is king of dad jokes. Don’t ever tell him you’re hungry. He can’t help himself, he’ll say ‘Hi, Hungry. I’m Ziggy.’”
“Your dad’s name is Ziggy?”
“No.” She turns back with a groan. “But that’s what he goes by. You’ll see. I can’t really prepare you any more. You’ll have to see it for yourself.”
“Get off my property, you crazy kids,” a man with straggly long hair and a tie-dye bandana says. He’s missing a few teeth and has a couple extra earrings lining his ears. His whiskers are long and unkempt, but his eyes beam as bright as Penny’s.
“That joke never gets old, Dad,” Penny says like an annoyed teenager. That melts away when he opens his arms wide to her, and they hug as though they haven’t seen each other in years. I know she was just here, so it makes me wonder if they do this every time. I haven’t hugged my father since I was old enough to know I didn’t want to.
“Who is this dapper gentleman?” Ziggy asks, slapping his leathery hands against my shoulder. “Man, feel that material.” He’s pinching at the sleeve of my suit and making an impressed-looking face at Penny. “You need a job?”
“No, sir,” I answer flatly. “My name is Dalton Croft I’m a frie—” The word catches in my throat just in time. “I know Penny. She mentioned you were having some trouble, and I offered to help. I’ve been running my own business for a decade. It’s become one of the largest companies in its field. I’m sure I could give you some tips.”
A look passes between Penny and Ziggy that I can’t read. I do understand it’s not undying gratitude.
“It’s worth a shot, Dad,” Penny says, looping her arm in his and walking into the small cement building. It was, at one time, painted white, but now it’s mostly gray cinder block with chipped paint. The windows are small and cracked. If there wasn’t a sign on the door that said Ziggy’s Employment Emporium I would think we were walking into a condemned, forgotten building.
“Welcome, Dalton,” Ziggy says, puffing his chest out with pride as he gestures around the room. The drop ceiling tiles are splotched with water spots from various old leaks, and the desk in the corner is propped up on one side with some old cinder blocks where a leg is missing. He gestures for Penny and me to sit in the two chairs facing his desk.
Ziggy is already digging out a shoe box from under the desk before my ass hits the seat.
“I do appreciate your offer, Dalton, but as I told Penny, I think we’ve finally met our match. The government is crushing small businesses like this all day long.”
I’m no fan of the IRS, but there are plenty of loopholes a small business can take advantage of if you’re savvy. “What’s the basic business model you use?”
“Well,” Ziggy says, leaning way back in his chair and folding his beat-up hands behind his head. “I have been in business for the last thirty years. People need a job, they are down on their luck, and I help them.”
“And they pay you a flat fee?”
“No, no,” Ziggy says, as though I’m nuts. “They come here and they don’t have a job. So how could they pay me?”
“So how do you make money?”
I can see Penny squirming in her chair. She clearly already knows the answer to this question.
Ziggy leans forward as though he’s going to let me in on a massive secret. “If I can help get them a job, they pay me. And before you ask, it’s a matter of how much they make at their job and how much they need to live off that determines how much they pay me.”
“Hmm,” is all I can manage as the picture becomes clear. It’s not a matter of how to keep Ziggy in business; I’m now interested in knowing how the hell he’s been able to keep it together this long.
“My father offers so many services,” Penny says. “It’s more than finding a job for people. He helps them improve their skills for interviewing, makes sure they have proper clothes. He tries to understand what their schedules will allow and how they can get their kids to and from school while they work. He looks at their entire situation.”
“Logistics.” I nod, trying to keep my head in the game. “So that’s a need of your clientele. That makes sense.”
“My clientele.” Ziggy chuckles loudly. “They’re friends. Every one of them.” He pulls open six drawers of a tall filing cabinet next to him. “I’ve had over four thousand satisfied customers. A very high percentage keep their jobs for years.”
“Four thousand?” I ask, wondering what kind of contact information he’s kept in those filing cabinets. “How do you advertise?”
“Word of mouth.” Ziggy shrugs. “I get a guy a job at the local plant and then his cousin comes in. The cousin tells his best friend. Plus, the employers in the area know I’m sending them people who are doing the best they can to get hired. I sometimes get calls before a job gets listed anywhere. They know I’m supporting the people who hire me to make sure they are successful. Here.” Ziggy pulls a file from the cabinet and opens it for me to see. “This is Renee. She has three children. She’s a single parent. Her skills were pretty minimal, but she’d been doing hair for all her friends for decades. I helped her get her license and found her a salon that would give her a shot. She had as much skill as anyone but without that piece of paper she couldn’t get on the books. I invested in her schooling, and she has worked a flexible schedule doing what she loves for years now. I think she sent me at least five or six other customers.”
“You paid for her to go to school?”
“I invested in her.” He nods. “Penny watched the kids for her when other child care fell through.” The pride on his face is powerful as he glances at his daughter.
“How much did she pay you?”
“She cuts my hair for free,” he says, whipping his long hair off his shoulder. “Plus her oldest boy cuts the grass here. Also free. I know you’re a successful guy; are you familiar with bartering?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“See this?” he asks, opening his drawer.
“Oh Dad, don’t,” Penny begs, covering her face with her hands.
“This is a real genuine prosthetic arm dating back to the turn of the century.” He takes the rusted metal skeletal contraption and reaches across the desk in my direction. “Give it a good look. I call him stretch. The kids think it’s a hoot.”
I reluctantly take the creepy looking thing and wonder if this could get any more bizarre.
“Art McDonald gave me that after I got him a job on a construction crew. It’s worth a pretty penny I think. I’ve been meaning to have it appraised.”
“I uh . . .” Rarely at loss for words, I glance around the rest of the office and see the mix of things that must have been given to him as payment over the years. What the hell did I get myself into? Note to self, next time Penny warns me? Listen.
“I imagine you’re a lot like my daughter Kylie,” Ziggy says. “You would tell me my business is a gold mine. A great success rate. Loyal customers. A network of employers who trust me. All I need to do is move the office closer to the city, charge a flat up-front fee, market my services on one of the online platforms that have popped up for recruiters over the years, standardize the prices for my other services, and stop paying for people to get a new outfit for interviews. Stop helping them get their GED. Don’t spend all my time trying to work out their lives for them. Just find them jobs and collect the money. Then I could pay the back taxes and the extra mortgage I took out on this place. If I brought my business into the twenty-first century, I could be back in the black in no time. Actually I could probably turn my brand into a franchise down the road.”
Not expecting his concise and well-thought-out plan, I hurry to a response. “That would all make a lot of sense. If you proposed that plan to the bank, I’m sure they’d support it. You’d just need to turn those old files and records into some summarized statistics.”
“How much was that suit?” Ziggy asks me as though we hadn’t been talking about something else. I don’t intend to tell him, but he keeps staring at the fabric, waiting.
“It’s a good quality suit.” I shrug.
“This sweater vest,” he says, tugging on his handmade brown shirt. “I got it for a buck at the Goodwill. Someone was done with it, and I needed it. I’ll get a lot of life out of it, then maybe even send it back to Goodwill. Well if I don’t drop a meatball on it or anything.” He stops speaking as though he’s made a point, but if he did, it’s lost on me. My silence gets him talking again.
“There is life left in this building, and there are people who need me right where I am. A flat rate will mean most of the people I helped before wouldn’t have been able to come here at all. All I want to do is keep helping people as I always have and not lose the little I get for it. Can you help with that?”
I’m a prisoner to blunt honesty when it comes to business. Sugarcoating isn’t on my résumé. “I’m not sure what you have here is sustainable. I can look at the numbers and maybe move some things around a bit, but if you’re not going to charge people more than it costs to run the business, then no one can do anything to help you. Math is a finite thing. This either adds up or it doesn’t.”
“Then it’s settled,” Ziggy says with a big smile as he slaps his hands together. “This business meeting is over, and we can shift gears to a social visit. Now, can I get you something to drink?”
I need a fucking drink. Something strong and straight, because my head is spinning. I didn’t know people like this even existed anymore.
Penny’s nervous voice cuts off my thoughts. “But what are you going to do then, Dad? You have a couple days before the bank is going to put a sign on that door and kick you out. If you won’t ask Kylie for money, and you won’t make any changes, there is no hope.”
“No hope,” Ziggy says, looking disappointed in her. “Penny Pot, that is something I never expected to hear from my girl. You and I, we do what we love and we let the cosmos work out the details. If your heart is in the right place, everything else will be fine.”
“But—”
“No buts, no nuts, no coconuts,” Ziggy says with a hardy laugh. “It’ll all work out somehow. I do really appreciate your time, Dalton. It was kind of you to come down here. It warms my heart to know Penny has such wonderful friends.”
Friends. There’s that damn word again. I can see where she gets it. Ziggy has been wildly misinformed. Life does not just happen to you. You have to make things happen. But if he’s not willing to change anything, there really isn’t anything I can do to help. I usually chuck that in the fuck-it bucket—not my problem. But the ache in Penny’s voice is reverberating around in my head.
“I hope it works out,” I say, annoyed with myself that it’s true. Just like I don’t do friends. I don’t do hope. I don’t cross my fingers and make a little wish. That’s a pointless strategy.
“Penny Pot here,” Ziggy says, pointing at his daughter, “used to be quite the assistant, growing up. Do the little song, darling?”
“Dad, no,” she says, peeking out again from behind her fingers. “I’m not doing the song.”
“Oh honey, I’m losing my business. My life’s work is going right down the drain. The least you can do is sing the song. Brighten your dear old dad’s sad day.”
“You’re laying it on pretty thick,” she groans, giving him a knowing look. “Fine. I’d answer the phone and sing a little jingle. Need a job? Need a hand? Ziggy is your employment man. Need a break? Feeling Down? Ziggy can turn it all around.”
Ziggy’s eyes dampen as his gaze leaves Penny and falls on me. He stares hard, like he’s trying to find my soul through my eyes. “Tell me, is there anything in life more important than someone believing in you that much? If I lose everything this week? If it all goes away, I’ll be able to put my head on my pillow and know I did what I loved, most of my life, and for a while I was my daughter’s hero.”
“Oh Dad.” Penny sniffled. Shit. This was all getting too heavy for me. They share another long hug and Penny says her goodbyes.
“You take care now,” Ziggy says, slapping a hand to my shoulder. His voice goes low, out of Penny’s earshot as he leans in. “Take care of her. She needs to smile right now. I’m putting you on the job.”
I want to explain to him that Penny is a woman living next door to me for only a few more days. She’s not someone I intend to take care of. She’s not someone I plan to know for much longer. But I know my actions, coming here with her, blurs that line, even in my own head. Instead I nod, because forming a coherent thought seems impossible.
“I’m sorry you wasted your time,” Penny says, clearing away a few stray tears as we hop in the waiting town car.
“I offered to come,” I say, but I know that doesn’t make her feel any better.
“I wish he would listen to sound advice.”
“I give the guy credit. He knows who he is, and he is sticking by what he believes. No one in business does that.”
“I guess that’s why he won’t be in business much longer.”
“I’ll try to think of something he could do that wouldn’t feel like he was compromising his ideals but would help him sustain what he’s doing.”
“You will?”
“I like a good challenge.” I shrug, not admitting that the old man was fascinating as hell and somehow, against all my better judgement, I’m actually rooting for him. As a man who runs a business, I know exactly how hard it is to find good employees. His business model, minus the payments he receives, actually makes a lot of sense. If his retention rates and referrals are as good as he says, he’s doing something right.
“I want to find a way to thank you,” Penny says, reaching over and squeezing my hand.
“I might not come up with anything he’ll agree to at all.”
“But you’re trying. Come with me. I have an idea.”