The Fourteen Day Soul Detox, Volume Two (15 page)

“Well, both your and
Christopher’s employment contract renegotiation would go a
little differently. In your case, we will be requiring you to sign a
three-year contract.”

“Excuse me?”

“That is an unusual length of
time,” Mark said, leaning over the table.

Nicole put her elbows on the table,
threading her fingers together. “Let me be frank with you here,
Jamie. We’re interested in your business and its location
enough to make an offer on it. But we’re making this specific
offer because of your shop’s twenty-five percent profit margin.
With only thirty-five open hours open a week, you have outperformed
every one of our shops in the county, all of which have twice as many
open hours. You also surpassed three of our shops in gross profit. We
would like you to join our team.”

I played with the sleeve of my suit.
“Honestly Nicole, I’m flattered, but it really wasn’t
due to my efforts. It’s pretty much all because of Chris. He’s
an incredibly talented person and I can’t speak for him.”

“I’m going to have to
disagree with you there, Jamie,” she said. She pulled out a
stack of papers. “Christopher—Chris is an incredibly
talented young man. I’m not fighting you on that point. We have
every intention of utilizing his skills to the fullest scope of their
potential if he chooses to remain with us. However, Chris has been
working for your company for six years, and until this year you made
a steady eighteen percent profit margin for all five years, except
for dipping down to seventeen percent last year. After you took full
management of the shop, it almost immediately increased its
profitability.”

“I—I have very specific
hours I can work, and—I… Nicole, truly, even with the
sale of the business and the money I’m going to be making from
the sale, I can’t continue to work for minimum wage for three
years,” I said.

She grinned wider at me. “We’re
not asking you to work minimum wage.” She pulled out a small
stack of papers clipped together from her pile. “We’re
asking you to be the general manager for all the Harrington’s
in the county—seven store locations. It’s a salary job
with benefits. As for the hours, you can continue the thirty-five
hours you have now.”

“Jamie, I’m going to
recommend that you talk to an employment lawyer about this,”
Mark said, leaning in. “This isn’t my area of expertise—”

“No, it isn’t,” a
voice I recognized said from behind me. I turned to see Pat, the
regular from the shop, standing with his shoulder leaning into the
wall just inside the open door to the meeting room.

“Hey Pat,” I said, raising
my eyebrows at him. “Do you… work here?”

“This is actually my company—one
of them,” he said, walking across the room and taking a seat
next to Nicole.

“Oh,” I said.

He grinned at me, flashing his dimples.
Tapping the paperwork in front of me, he said, “If you want to
get a lawyer, by all means do it. But there’s no hidden agendas
in here, no misleading language that says ‘promise’, but
isn’t binding. I’d like you to work for me; I’d
like both you and Chris to work for me.”

“Okay—thank you for the
offer, Pat, I’ll take this with me and go talk to Chris. I have
a lot to consider,” I said, starting to stand.

“Such as?” Pat said.

“I appreciate it, I do, but I
still need to really think about if it’s right for me and the
shop,” I said, hovering half-standing.

“Why wouldn’t it be? I’ve
seen your tax records; you don’t get paid much right now. This
would dissolve your debt and put you ahead, it would offer job
security for three years.” His bright gaze bored into mine.

I sat back down, forcing myself to hold
his gaze. “Thank you, but I actually don’t have anything
to sell right now. There’s a judgment lien on my business, and
until I talk to the lien holders, I can’t make any decisions.”

“I am the lien holder,” Pat
said.

“What… what did you say?”
I whispered.

“I own the lien on your business.
Timepiece is also my company.”

I jumped out of my chair and it tumbled
to the floor. I stared down at him, unable to tear my gaze away from
his. “What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked, fighting
to keep my voice down.

Silence engulfed the room. Mark and
Nicole stared at me with a mixture of confusion and shock. Pat’s
expression bordered between concern and annoyance.

“Jamie—”

“Don’t say my name like you
have a right to say it to me—like a friend would. You came into
my shop every day, talked to me every day… what is wrong with
you? What? Were you spying on me?”

He pushed the employment contract
toward me. “Put past grievances aside here…” he
touched his chest, “I have, and—”

“I would rather die than work for
you,” I said.

“That’s a little dramatic.”

“You want to know what’s
dramatic?” I asked, putting a hand on the table and leaning
forward. “What’s dramatic is having your husband die and
being sued for three million dollars three days later.”

“I actually sued for eight
million dollars but the estate was only worth three,” he said,
leaning back in his chair. “The three million didn’t even
compensate Timepiece for half of the damage your husband did.”

“But you didn’t sue my
husband. My husband is dead. You sued me!” I exclaimed.

“I sued the estate during
probate, it was well within the law,” he said.

“And you exercised every loophole
of the law to ensure you got everything. You didn’t just take
Logan’s half, you took every single penny me and my daughter
had. Every penny I had earned from years of working my ass off,”
I said.

“You kept the business,” he
said, his brows lifting.

“In name only, and only if I paid
off two million dollars in fifteen years,” I said.

“Which at your current profit
rate, you could do in ten and a half years. If anything, I’d
say you thrived in this adversity.”

“Thrived?” I spat. Shaking
my head, I leaned down and righted the chair. I looked back to Nicole
and said, “Is the offer still available if I don’t join
the company?”

She glanced over toward Pat, then back
at me. “I’m sorry, no.”

“Alright, I’m going to have
to turn down your offer. Thank you for your time,” I said.

“You’re making a mistake,
Jamie,” Pat warned.

“I hope you enjoy the furniture
my father made my daughter for her birthday,” I spat. I walked
out of the room, wiping hot tears from my face.

“Jamie.”

I turned to find Mark jogging toward
me.

“I am so sorry, Mark. I just ran
out of there not even thinking of you,” I said.

“Perfectly understandable,”
he said, catching up. “I’ll walk you out of the
building.” He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket.

“Thank you, but I’m fine.”
I held up my sleeve, and the wet spot on it.

He walked me past the reception desk to
the bank of elevators. We were silent as we rode down the elevators
and crossed through the bright reception atrium, and as we walked all
the way through the parking lot to our parked cars.

Mark stopped in front of his car. He
pulled a business card out of his pocket.

“He gave me this to give to you,
I can dispose of it if you’d like,” he said, handing it
over.

“Thank you, but I’ll take
it for my voodoo doll,” I said, reaching for it.

His face remained impassive as he said,
“I am assuming you no longer wish to discuss your lien with
Timepiece. I had thought it odd that they were located in the same
business park.”

“The fuck?” I said, looking
down at the card. “Pat gave this to you?”

“He did,” Mark confirmed.

“He is sick. There is something
seriously wrong with that guy!”

“I’m not going to argue
with you there,” Mark said.

“Ugh, this makes me so mad!”
I looked up at Mark. “You’ve been so generous with your
time, but can I ask you one more favor?”

“You can,” he said.

“Timepiece is a finance company?”

“Accounting and finance
placement,” he said.

“I’m going in there,”
I said.

“Why?” he said.

I turned the card around. “Pat’s
full name is Patrick Kelly Sr. Just so happens that another Patrick
Kelly—a young, blond, good-looking dad of one of my daughter’s
friends has been asking me out lately. I actually spent the weekend
hanging out with him.”

“I’d recommend you don’t
go in there. This company has already sued you once; they could file
charges against you if you act in any way aggressive or threatening
toward Patrick Kelly Jr. in his place of employment.”

“I’m not going to do
either, all I’m going to do is go in there and say hi. I just
want him to know I know and I’m not doing it over the phone,”
I said.

“I’m sorry, Jamie. You’ll
have to this on your own, though I strongly recommend against it,”
he said.

“I understand. Thank you for all
your help,” I said.

“Just between you and me, I think
what that man did to you and your family was very wrong under the
circumstances. However, I think that what he’s doing now, with
this offer—which he has not rescinded—could have
motivations your anger is blinding you to.” He turned to unlock
his car. “And with that, I will leave you.”

“Thank you, Mark,” I said,
stepping back so he would have room to back out.

I got into my car and pulled out my
phone, searching for Timepiece’s location. I clicked on the
address, and pressed the button to have my phone direct me.

“Turn left onto Sea Breeze Way,”
the mechanical voice said.

I followed the directions past five
more identical buildings, to yet another identical building. I parked
in the back of the lot and again stared at the business card.

“Fuck him,” I said,
grabbing the stack of papers I’d placed on the passenger seat
and climbing out of my car.

After crossing the lot, I entered an
almost identical atrium, though in this building, the interior walls
were covered in a green, grassy substance. A plaque on a nearby wall
declared it to be ‘Green Art’. The area smelled fresh,
rather than dirty or mossy.

I walked up to the security personnel
lady sitting behind a similar desk as the building I had just left.

“Hello,” I said to her.
“Patrick Kelly Sr. asked me to go over some paperwork with a
tax attorney of the same name… I think it was in this
building.” I held out the business card so she could see
Patrick Kelly’s name and the cell phone number he had
handwritten under it.

“Yes, you’re in the right
building. And you’ve already been given a guest pass and been
entered into our system?” She leaned forward to squint at my
name tag through thick glasses, giving me a clear view of her neat
gray bun.

“Yes, the other guard registered
me,” I said.

“Alright, go ahead in. Top
floor…” she typed into her computer, then said, “Suite
five fifteen.”

“Thank you,” I said,
heading to an elevator at the side of the atrium. A man in gym
clothes got on the elevator with me, getting off at the third floor.
I rode to the fifth floor alone, finding an entrance room very
similar to the one in the Harrington’s building, though there
were large photographs of seemingly important people rather than
free-standing wall hangings.

I gave the twenty-something male
receptionist the same story, showing him the card. “He’s
actually expecting me, his father called him,” I said.

“Your name?” the
receptionist asked, his focus on the screen.

“Jamie Scott,” I said.

He typed into his computer. “You
are in our system as a guest of Harrington Company,” he said.

“Yeah, I had a meeting with
Nicole Murphy and Patrick Kelly Sr. They made an offer on my
business. But Timepiece has a lien on my business, so I—”

“Oh, was it your attorney that
called this morning?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I’ve already cleared the
meeting with another team member in accounting, but you say that Mr.
Kelly asked you to speak to Patrick Kelly Jr directly?” he
asked.

“Yes, he told Patrick that I’d
be here in a couple of minutes,” I said.

“Okay, go ahead back to suite
five fifteen,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said, walking
through the frosted glass door, this one with the Timepiece logo on
it. I read the plaques beside each door until I saw, ‘Suite
515: Patrick Kelly, JD, Senior Tax Manager’.

I stepped through the open door to a
small fore-office with a single desk and a young woman sitting in
front of it. She didn’t look up as I approached, her focus
pointedly on her cell phone in her lap.

I glanced at Patrick’s office
door, then back the way I came. Closing my eyes, I shook my head. On
an exhale, I turned back the way I had come walking toward the office
door.

“Can I help you?”

I turned to see the receptionist
looking up, her short, multi-colored hair sticking out from her face
in all directions as if she’s just stuck her finger in a light
socket.

“Are you looking for someone?”
she asked.

“I was, but I think I changed my
mind. Sorry to bother you,” I said.

I turned back to exit the small office
when I heard the door behind me open and Patrick say, “Jamie?”

I spun slowly until I faced Patrick.

His brow was furrowed into a look of
confusion until the expression fell away. His shoulders dropped
slightly. “Oh,” he said.

I licked my lips, and looked the other
way. “Could I talk to you for a second?” I asked.

“Yeah, um…” he
stepped back into his office, “Come on in.”

I stepped into his space, taking in the
floor-to-ceiling view of a park ending abruptly to overlook the
ocean. I took a seat at his desk, glancing between his photos of Kay:
Kay as a baby, laughing in a posed photo with him, Kay on a swing
set, Kay spinning in a tutu.