Just Another Damn Love Story (15 page)

“And I’m a doctor, so naturally I’m not big on creationism,”  David told them.  “And as a medical professional, I detest guns.”

“So, on what issues do you agree with your party?”  Shaun asked.

“Less government, lower taxes,”  David started.

“Yes, we’re fiscal conservatives,”  Brittany told them.

“Ah, don’t-mess-with-my-money Republicans!”  Shaun laughed.

The others around the table joined in the laughter.

“You’ll tolerate a lot of the liberal social policies, as long as they don’t touch the bank account,”  Kim said laughing.

“Here comes Mr. Sterling!”  Mia announced.

Kim rose from the table and hugged Sterling when he walked up.  “Guys, this is Sterling.”

Nods and greetings went around the table.

“Sterling, this is Mia,”  Kim said.  Sterling and Mia shook hands.  “This is Brittany.” 

“Good to meet you,”  Brittany said, shaking hands with Sterling.

“This is Brittany’s boyfriend, David.”  Kim said, introducing them.  Sterling and David shook hands.  “And this is Shaun, Mia’s boyfriend.”

“Good to meet you,”  Shaun told Sterling as they shook hands.

Sterling seated himself.  “So, how have you been enjoying yourselves?”

“Fantastic!”  Kim said.

“I can’t believe this place!”  Mia told him.  “It’s everything that people said it was!”

“So, Sterling, let’s hear your opinion on the upcoming elections,”  Mia told him.

“I don’t do politics when I’m with friends,”  Sterling told her.

“Why not?”  Shaun asked.

“Yeah, that’s the best time to do politics,”  Mia said.

“Friendship and political opinions, don’t always mix,”  Sterling answered.

“I’ll bet you he’s a Republican,”  Mia said, teasing.

“Hey, y’all leave my man alone!”  Kim told them.

“Leave him alone?”  Brittany laughed.  “We haven’t even gotten started with him yet!”

“Yeah,”  David chimed in.  “We haven’t even asked him what his intentions are.”

Sterling laughed.

“I’m sorry, baby,”  Kim told him.

“That’s okay,”  Sterling said, waving off her apology.  “I’m glad that you have friends who look out for you.”

“So, Sterling, what
are
your intentions?”  Brittany asked.

“What do you think about the direction this country is going in?”  Mia asked.

“Are you a Republican, Sterling?”  Shaun asked.

“What’s wrong with being a Republican?”  David asked Shaun.

“Woah, calm down, guys,”  Kimberly said, holding up her hands.  “You can question him, but let’s not turn this into the Spanish Inquisition.”

“Let’s see,”  Sterling said, placing his hand beneath his chin.  “My intentions are to be a loving, supportive, caring boyfriend to Kim.  I think that this is the greatest country in the world, but I also think that we can do better.  No, I’m not a Republican.  I consider myself more of an Independent.  And yes, Mia.  I’m supporting Obama in this election, even though I really need those Bush tax cuts to be permanent.  Obama wants to increase taxes on the rich, and I’m rich.  But, if I have to pay a little more in order to insure that poor people in this country have health care, and that we save the planet, then I’m willing to do that.”

“Wow, an undercover Republican who’s willing to take a hit to his wallet!”  Shaun said, teasing.  “Unlike some other Republicans at the table, who shall remain nameless.”

“Brittany and David!”  the group said in unison.  Everyone around the table burst into laughter.

“Sorry, Sterling, it’s a little inside joke,”  Kim explained.  “Brittany’s last name is Sherwood, as in Sherwood Hotels.  And David’s last name is Phillips, as in Phillips Petroleum.  They come from old money, White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, East Coast establishment Republican families.”

“And Mia never lets us forget it,”  David added.

“Don’t be embarrassed about your trust funds now,”  Mia smiled.

“David is also a doctor,”  Brittany said.  “He’s earning his way through life by helping heal people.”

“Okay, so he’s a good Republican WASP!”  Mia said, smiling.

“Speaking of doctors, guess who I ran into the other day,” Shaun said.

“Who?”  Brittany asked.

“John,”  Shaun said.

Mia elbowed him under the table.

“What?”  Shaun asked, turning his palms up.

Mia nodded toward Sterling.

“That’s okay,”  Sterling reassured her.  “I know about John.  I’m not insecure.”

“It’s just bad etiquette to talk about the old boyfriend when the new boyfriend is sitting right in front of your face!”  Brittany said through clenched teeth.

“I was just saying,”  Shaun said.  “He was telling me that he’s getting married. Did you guys know?”

“Yes, we knew!”  Mia said, rolling her eyes.

“I got an invitation,”  David said.

“He said that mine was in the mail,”  Shaun told them.  “Did you get an invitation?” 

“Yes!”  Brittany snapped.

“Did you?”  Shaun asked Kim.

Kim turned her head and stared across the room.  “Yeah.”

“Well, it’s the elephant in the room,”  Shaun said.  “We might as well talk about it.  Who’s going?”

“Shaun!”  Mia said, punching him in his chest. 

“What?”  Shaun asked.

“You’re an idiot,”  David told him.

“It’s okay,”  Sterling told them.

“I have to go, he’s a colleague, remember?”  David said.

“I have to go with David as his date,”  Brittany said.

“Same with me and Mia,”  Shaun said.  He turned toward Kim.

“My parents are going,”  Kim said.  “He also sent me an invitation to my parent’s home.”

Sterling turned toward Kim.  “I understand.  If you want to go, I won’t be upset with you.”

“I don’t know,”  Kim said, exhaling.  “If I was to go, it would be for all the wrong reasons.”

“Like what?”  Sterling asked.

“To see this bi… young lady that he’s marrying,”  Kim said, catching herself. 

“I heard that she looks young,”  Brittany said.

“Like a high school pop tart!”  Mia said.  “That boy is robbing the cradle!”

Laughter went around the table.

“I would mainly go,”  Kim said solemnly.  “To show that bastard that he didn’t break me.”

Chapter Nineteen

Sterling leaned back in his chair and propped his feet up onto his desk.

“You don’t have to thank me, Kim,”  He said, adjusting the telephone next to his ear.  “Vespasian was planning on launching its new bags with a vigorous ad campaign anyway.  I just told the marketing department who to contact over at Mocha.”

“Yeah, I’m sure, Sterling,”  Kim said.  “You can’t keep on doing this.”

“Doing what?”

“Coming to my rescue.”

“What are you talking about?”  Sterling asked.  “I work for a fashion house, you work for a fashion magazine.  Fashion houses advertise in fashion magazines.  What’s unusual about that?  Our companies do business together all the time.  This time, I happened to know one of the ad execs, and told someone in marketing, that executive’s name.  Nothing wrong with that.”

“You’re out of this world, you know that?”

“I’ve been told that before.”

“So, are you going to go with me?”

“With you?  Where?”

“To John’s wedding,”  she asked nervously.

“You want to take your new boyfriend, to your ex-boyfriend’s wedding?”  Sterling asked.

“Yeah.”

“That’s freaky.”

Kim laughed.  “I know on the surface it sounds a little weird, but I need your support.”

“My support?”  Sterling asked.  “And this is not just to show dude that you have someone too?”

“In a way it is.  I do want to show him that I’ve moved on.”

“Well, if you feel that you have to show him that you’ve moved on, then that means you really haven’t moved on.  Why do you need to show him anything?  Why does he still even matter?”

“Sterling, you don’t know what I went through,”  Kim said softly.  “You don’t know what they tried to do to me.”

“They?  Who is they?”

“John, his family, a lot of people who I thought were my friends,”  Kim explained.  “They all turned on me.  They went out of their way to make life miserable for me.  They wanted to break me.  They wanted to make me bow down, and accept all of the shit John was putting me through.  They took me off of all their little guest lists, I was uninvited from parties and other social events, and I was basically snubbed in public.  I have to walk in that place with my head held high, and show them all that I’m still here!  I want to walk in there and show them that they didn’t break me.”

“So, what happened between you two?”  Sterling asked.

“I couldn’t take his stepping out on me with his baby mommas,”  Kim explained.  “And I couldn’t deal with all of the drama that they kept bringing into our relationship.  It was always something with them.  It really got out of control when they started slashing my tires and breaking my windows and calling my job.  After that, I vowed that I would never again date a man with a kid.  No more baby momma drama for me.”

Sterling went silent.

“Hey, my boss is calling me,”  Kim told him.  “I’ll talk to you later.  Think about going to the wedding with me, please.  We have a few weeks before you have to decide.”

“Okay, baby,”  Sterling said softly.  “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Bye.”

“Bye.”

Sterling’s office door swung open.

“We’re in deep shit!”  Wilson told him, slinging a brown leather purse onto Sterling’s desk.

“What’s this?”  Sterling said, glancing over the bag.  “This is nice!”

“That’s why we’re up shit creek!”  Wilson told him.  “It isn’t ours.”

“Oh,” Sterling sat up in his seat.

“Please allow me to present Ralph Lauren’s brand new Ricky Bag,”  Wilson said.  “A three thousand eight hundred and fifty dollar nod to sheer luxury.  Rich women are going to go crazy over this thing.  There is going to be a line of BMWs and Mercedes two miles long outside of every Saks Fifth Avenue, and Neiman Marcus in the country.  We are in trouble.”

Sterling lifted the saddle colored leather bag and examined it carefully.  “Hmmm.  Gold hardware, great structure, sophisticated, elegant, great stitching, versatile.”

“Critics are calling it this season’s ‘it’ bag,”  Wilson told him.

“We have a similar bag coming out,”  Sterling told him.

“Yeah, but our bag is eighteen hundred dollars,”  Wilson pointed out.  “If they put out a bag that’s almost four grand, and we put out a bag that’s almost two grand, and they both look similar, it makes our bag look like a cheap knock off.  Remember the Louis Vuitton slash Dooney and Burke fiasco?  It will belittle our whole line.  Our whole company.”

“So what do we do?  Raise the price on our bag by two grand?”

“That may be the only thing we
can
do,”  Wilson told him.  “Our leather is just as thick, we’re using real gold hardware, thick triple stitching, top of the line hides, we have great structure, everything.  We could legitimately sell our bags for the same price.”

“And that would mean?”

“That women would have to decide between a Ralph Lauren or a Vespasian bag, or they would have to buy both.”

“Buy both?”  Sterling asked, lifting an eyebrow.  “That's almost eight thousand dollars for two leather purses that look exactly the same.”

“These are extremely rich women that these bags are targeting.  They can afford both.  But that is not our only problem.”

Sterling leaned back and exhaled.  “What’s the really bad news?”

“Well, we designed our brown leather bag to go hand in hand with our multi-color,”  Wilson explained.  They are virtually the same bags, but the brown bag was to appeal to either older, or more conservative women, or women who wanted a more sophisticated bag for more sophisticated occasions.  We had anticipated a lot of women springing for both bags, with the multi-color being an everyday bag.  Our marketing department also felt that they could be paired as mother-daughter sets, with the multi-color being the daughter’s bag.  Well, if we move that bag upscale, then we’ll have nothing to pair with our multi-color.”

“So, we’ll have to design another bag to go with the multi-color?”  Sterling asked.

“That’s the best solution.  I’ve already got the designers working on it.  Now, this leaves us with our third problem.  Our multi-color was supposed to be the ‘it’ bag this season.  Going up against this new Ralph Lauren bag, and our own ‘Ricky Bag’, is going to steal our multi-color’s thunder.”

“Our bag is reversible, and the V’s glow in the dark,”  Sterling pointed out.  “We have the teen and young adult market on lock.  They are the ones who are going to determine the year’s ‘it’ bag, not the critics.  Let’s go with what we have, keep the price the same for our ‘Ricky Bag’, and bring out a new design to compete with their ‘Ricky Bag’.  Did you see the new design that Gianna sent over from Italy?”

“Which one?”

“That brown leather ‘Mummy Bag’ that she did,”  Sterling told him.  “That thing is cold!  When I saw it, my mouth fell open.”

“I haven’t seen it,”  Wilson told him.

“It’s gorgeous.  It's toffee colored leather, with two diagonal stitches running down the sides, but the stitching is hidden in the seams.  It looks like three thick pieces of leather sewn together, with diagonal stitching. The gold clasp up top is hidden behind a thick leather flap that goes down one side of the bag, and buttons into a recessed section beneath the bag, so it sits flush at the bottom.  The leather flap corresponds with the center section of the bag, so it maintains that three piece look.  I mean, that thing is awesome.  I was definitely thinking of pricing that bag between four to six thousand dollars.”

Wilson placed his hand beneath his chin and smiled.  “Hmmmm.  The Mummy Bag.  I like it.  In fact, I love it.  We’re going to blow them out of the water.”

“Call Italy, get the ball rolling.  Get the CAD files to the shop and have them manufacture a few of them for market testing.”

Wilson nodded.  “I’ll get right on it.”