The Job (10 page)

“All
told,” she says, “about a third of everything I carry.”

I’m
about to tell her that a third isn’t that bad, but then I pull my head out of
my ass.

“Shit.”

“Yeah,”
she says, “shit is right. Do you want to know what’s worse? Do you want to know
what’s even worse than that?”

I
cringe. “It gets worse than that?”

“Yeah,”
she says. “You know how I wanted you to remodel the plus section so I could
expand it?”

“Yeah,”
I answer, confused. “That’s kind of why we’re here.”

“Oh,
I know,” she laughs. “What’s worse than everything else is that I just agreed
to make Mr. Burbank my
sole
supplier
of plus-sized clothing. So now, all of the extra business I was going to do
giving women something chic and sexy to wear for a price they won’t have to
sell their firstborn to afford is fucked! I have two choices: Either I can keep
the prices where I want them and lose thousands of dollars a month on clothes
that I’m actually selling, or I can raise the prices on everything in the
store—
‘cause
I’m sure as hell not going to make one
demographic of women pay more than another—completely obliterating my whole
mission statement, business plan and just about the only reason that I got into
this stupid fucking business in the first place.”

It’s
certainly not my fault that she blew it in her meeting, but I really didn’t
help matters, either.

“But
hey, at least you had a change of heart and decided not to follow through with
the threat that put me in this position in the first place. That’s just
perfect,” she says.

I
don’t know what to say to her, but she’s waiting for me to say something.

“I’m
sorry,” I tell her.

At
least it’s a true statement.

“You’re
sorry,” she says. “Well, that magically makes it all better. You want to know
what pisses me off even more than
everything
else I just told you?” she asks.

“Do
I?” I ask.

“Oh
yeah,” she says. “It’s actually good news for you. I’ve already sunk so much
into the whole remodel that there’s no way it would be cost-effective for me to
just fire your ass once and for all. So, even after this situation
which you and your men caused
by
breaking into my store, letting the wrong guy quit while protecting the one who
actually did it, yelling at me in front of my employees—”

“Hey,
we both did that,” I interrupt.

Apparently
my attempt at levity is not appreciated.

“Then,”
she says, “to top it all off, you all but blackmail me into agreeing to do what
you want me to do in the first place which, let’s face it, boils down to me
covering your ass for a mistake
you
made, putting me in a position where I wasn’t in any way prepared to negotiate
a business deal with one of the top clothing suppliers in New York, and I can’t
fire you!”

“Hold
on,” I tell her. “I know you’re upset, and I know it’s because of me, but will
you just take a quick walk with me? I want to show you something that might
cheer you up.”

“What
do you think could possibly cheer me up right now?” she asks.

“Just
come with me,” I tell her. “It may not make everything better, but it might
just turn things around enough that you can go home tonight with at least one
thing to be happy about.”

I
would tell her that it’s not my fault she couldn’t stop her emotions from
affecting her business transactions but, ironically, I would feel too guilty.

“Just
give me a minute,” she says and takes a deep breath.

“Okay,”
I tell her.

“
Outside
,” she says.

I
walk out of the office and I can hear her heels behind me. I turn around and
she stops in front of me.

“What?”
she asks.

“Follow
me,” I tell her.

From
there, I walk her up to the front where the guys are putting the finishing
touches on the window.

“Now,
we’re going to keep the grating up on the outside—permanently if you’d like it,
otherwise, at least until the window cures—but that’s basically done. I need to
get my carpet guy in here to take care of this section, but I can call him
tonight and have him here by tomorrow. Every possible bit of space that we
could get without encroaching on another section is here, the sunken floor is
set and ready to be carpeted with the rest of it and other than a few things
here and there, we’re basically done.”

“That’s
great,” she says, smiling. “You guys have done such awesome work. Thank you so
much.” She leans in toward me, saying, “So you knew that you were this close
and you still went through with your intimidation tactic?”

She
has a point.

“It
was kind of a principle thing,” I whisper back, hoping the guys aren’t paying
too close attention to what Jessica and I are talking about. “I am very sorry
about that, though. I should have thought it through.”

“That’s
okay,” she says. “Hey guys. Everything looks great, but seeing all of your
amazing work has given me a few more ideas that we can do to make this space
even better than it is right now.”

“What
are you doing?” I murmur into her ear.

“You’ll
be doing a few upgrades free of charge,” she says. “If you don’t like that,
I’ll simply nullify your contract for unwillingness to complete the project as
requested.”

“You
can’t do that,” I tell her, becoming acutely aware that it’s not so fun to be
on the business end of a personal vendetta. “The project that was requested is
hardly the project that we ended up with. If anyone violated the contract, it
was you.”

“Actually,”
she says, turning toward me seemingly just so she can look me in the eyes when
she says it, “I had my lawyer add in a clause before we signed that changes to
the initial plans could be made at my sole discretion at any point during the
contract. So,” she continues, “here’s an ultimatum for
you
: You either do exactly what I tell you to do, free of charge,
or we tear up your contract and you and your men are going to be getting a much
smaller paycheck than you thought you had coming, and I’m not just talking
about a few bucks either. I’m talking six figures.”

This
is why you shouldn’t let a client pay you in installments and why you always,
always
read a contract twice.

Chapter
Seven

Setting
Boundaries… Or Not

Jessica

“So
why don’t you want me to know your name or age?” he writes.

“Just
because and you haven’t told your name or age either.”

My
new phone buddy and I have been chatting it up on a daily basis, and I think
Kristin is onto me.

“Well
I’m just around thirty but my name…I like to keep the suspense.”

“Same
here…”

“Why
don’t you want to talk about what you do for a living then?” he writes.

“At
this point, I’m pretty sure that I couldn’t talk about it without coming across
as bitter and, really, there are better things to talk about.”

He
writes back, “Yeah, I can understand that. So, what do you want to talk about?”

“What
do you do when the thing you love doing gets soiled by someone who can’t help
but ruin everything?” I ask.

“I
thought we weren’t talking about work,” he writes.

“You’re
right, of course,” I respond. “How long was your longest relationship?”

“One
year,” he writes. “I know that doesn’t sound like much, but I really thought
she was it. You?”

“I
really wouldn’t feel bad about that,” I answer. “My longest relationship was for
a couple years with an older guy.”

“What
happened?” he asks.

“It
turned out that he didn’t really like me, so much as he wanted to make someone
else jealous. It kind of sucked figuring that out.”

“If
it makes you feel any better,” he writes, “my last relationship ended when I
came home to find my girlfriend packing up my things.”

I
smile. “Yeah, that might be worse.”

“Oh,
what’s worse is that she’d apparently been ‘dating’ someone else for a large
portion of our relationship. He was there helping box up my stuff.”

“All
right,” I type, “I think you win this round.”

“So,
have you ever gotten close to tying the knot?” he writes.

It’s
really not a question I want to answer, mainly because it’s one of the few
questions to which I really don’t
have
a good answer.

“Work
always seemed more pressing,” I write. I send another, saying, “Of course, I
always thought that work was going to be the catalyst for the right kind of
life, but apparently that’s not exactly as advertised.”

“Isn’t
it great how we’re always told that work is going to make our lives the most
livable, but it just seems to get in the way of everything else?” he writes. A
few seconds later, I get another message from him, saying, “I know it’s trite
by now, but aren’t we supposed to work to live, not the other way around?”

“That’s
what I’ve always heard,” I write and laugh as I continue, “but I have a
sneaking suspicion the people telling us that are the ones who are actually
benefitting from the work we do.”

“Are
you sure you don’t want to talk about work?” he writes. “It seems like that’s
what’s really on your mind right now.”

“I’m
sure. I’m sorry. I’m just trying, although failing, to think of something else
to talk about. Work is really the only thing I do anymore.”

“No
sorries
,” he writes. “You said ‘anymore’ what did you
do before you worked all the time?”

It
takes a minute for me to recall, but my mind finally settles on a vague, hazy
memory, “I used to paint. I was never really that good at it, but I really
enjoyed doing it all the same.”

“Why
don’t you paint now?” he writes.

I’m
sitting on my couch, and I look out the window at the night. There are a lot of
things I’ve had to push to the side in order to make it work at the store.

This
is what it’s like to own a business and not be super rich.

I
type, “Sometimes, to fulfill one dream, you have to give up on others.”

It’s
the most depressing thing I could think to write, but it’s also the most
accurate.

People
don’t get ahead by trying to follow all of their dreams at the same time. It’s
like multitasking: Yeah, you can work on multiple things at once, but it takes
longer and nothing gets done nearly as well. It’s all about focus.

The
phone beeps.

“I
understand that you have to refine your plans, but that doesn’t mean you have
to lose who you are and the things you love in the process,” he writes.

Yeah,
I kind of do.

Who
knows what would happen if I
wasn’t
there all day every day? Someone would probably end up breaking in and I’d end
up getting a phone call from the security provider on my way homes from my
cancer-ridden mother’s house.

Wait.

It’s
not that I don’t trust my staff—I wouldn’t have hired them if I didn’t. It’s
just that they have a way of doing things and I have a way of doing things.

While
I’m there, I can oversee them and correct their course, but if I’m not there,
they’ll just do things the way they think they should be done, rather than the
way I
know
they should be done.

My
phone beeps again.

“Still
there?”

I
write back, “Yeah. I guess I just don’t trust that things would get done if I
wasn’t always there to oversee it.”

I
flip on the television, not so much for the entertainment value, more for the
fact that it’s just nice to hear another voice than the one through which my
thoughts come. Mine.

“Bad
staff?” he asks.

“No,”
I write, “they’re great. They helped me build this thing. They just don’t have
the inside experience to deal with everything that could come through the
door.”

The
more I’m watching myself explain this, the less convinced I am that it’s the
right course of action. The problem is that I don’t know how to do it any other
way.

My
phone beeps, and I read, “Why not?”

I
sit there and stare at the phone.

It’s
a simple question that really should have a simple answer, but I’ve got nothing
here.

I
write back, “What do you mean?” just to by myself some more time, but I don’t
think that’s going to work.

My
phone rings.

“Hello?”

“Hey,
Jessica,” it’s my dad. “I don’t want to worry you, but your mother and I are in
the hospital. She’s fine, but she’s in a lot of pain. I was wondering if you
might be able to come and sit with her a bit tonight.”

“Yeah,”
I tell him. “Of course, Dad, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“All
right,” he says. “They’re going to go ahead and keep her here for a few hours.
I guess they’re just going to go ahead and do the bone scans they had planned
for her next appointment so she’s going to be here for a while. I just don’t
want to have to leave her here all alone.”

“Where
are you going?” I ask.

“I
have to get back to the house. A young couple made a late appointment for a
walkthrough, and if they can’t see it tonight, they’re not going to be able to
see it for at least another month,” he answers.

“A
walkthrough? What are you talking about?” I ask.

The
line is silent for a minute.

“We’re
selling the house, dear,” he says quietly.

“What?”
I ask. “Why?”

“Between
my medical bills and your mother’s medical bills, I just don’t think we’re
going to be able to keep up with the mortgage payments,” he says. “Don’t worry,
though, we’ll be fine.”

“Let
me help you,” I tell him. “I’ve got money saved up from the store. I can pay
your mortgage until you two get back on your feet.”

“We
couldn’t let you do that, Jessica,” he says. “You’ve worked hard for that
money, and we really don’t need a house that big anymore. I think this is going
to be for the best. With my health and your mother’s health, we’re not really
going to be able to take care of all the upkeep on it anyway.”

“Dad,
I can’t just sit by and watch you and Mom lose the house,” I tell him.

“It’s
already done,” he says. “We’ve found a realtor and put it on the market. If
this couple likes it as much in person as they did on the website, I think we
might just get an offer tonight, maybe tomorrow.”

“Don’t
do anything until I’ve had a chance to talk to you about it,” I tell him. “I
have money that I was going to put toward finishing off this remodel, but it’s
almost done anyway. The only reason I was going to have the workers keep going
was for spite—let me help you.”