The Job (11 page)

“We
can’t let you do that—hold on, your mother wants to talk to you,” he says and
hands the phone over.

“Jessica?”

“Hey,
Mom, how are you feeling?” I ask.

“I’ll
be all right. I’m in some pain, but the doctor says that’s normal. If anything,
this is a good thing because his schedule seemed to magically open up when I
came in,” she says. “Now, I don’t know exactly what it is that you’ve been
saying to your father, but based on what I’ve heard from this end of the
conversation, I get the idea that you’re thinking of doing something really
stupid.”

“Mom,
I can’t just—”

“It’s
what has to happen,” she interrupts. “We can’t take your money and we can’t
keep caring for that house as it is. Promise me that you’re not going to blow
your savings trying to keep us in a house that we can’t afford, and that’s too
big for just the two of us anyway.”

“But
Mom, I—”

“Promise
me,” she interrupts again. “One of the only perks to having cancer is that people
start listening to you. Are you really not going to listen to your mother?”

Now
there’s the guilt trip from hell.

“We’re
not going to let you do it, sweetheart,” she says. “We’ve already found a nice
little apartment in town and it’s really going to be much closer to what we
need, so I want you to promise me that you’re not going to fight us on this.
This is what we want and it’s what we need.”

“What
if I buy it?” I ask. “It has more room than my apartment, and I bet it would
end up being cheaper anyway,
‘
cause
it’s outside the city. Everybody wins.”

“I
don’t know, sweetheart,” she says. “I know rent in the city is horrendous, but
do you really think that you’d be up for taking this place on? It’s a big
responsibility.”

And
that right there, I think, is the root cause of my ambition: to prove to my mom
that not only am I not afraid of responsibility, but that I can handle it
better than she can. Of course, she’s calling me from the hospital, so I think
it’s
best that I leave that part out of my response to her.

“It
won’t be a problem,” I tell her. “Do you have enough to stay there another
month? I can start getting my stuff moved and everything, but I do need to give
my landlord
thirty-days
’ notice before I just up and
leave.”

“Why
don’t we talk about it over dinner tomorrow night?” she asks. “You don’t have
to come down here. At this point, I’m just here for some tests. The doctor gave
me some medication for the pain, and it’s really starting to kick in, so I
should probably let you go.”

“I’m
not going to make you go through all that by yourself,” I tell her.

“Hold
on a minute,” she says.

I
sit and wait.

My
mother, when she’s not sick, can be a bit of a handful. Okay, she’s still a
handful.

When
I was growing up, my dad was always the one telling me I could do anything I
want to do. Mom always told me that it would be better for me to manage my
expectations.

Their
house isn’t huge, but it does have more room than mine. Plus, if I can talk
them into selling it to me, I might be able to talk them into staying there.

Not
too many people would be so persistent with the idea of moving back in with
their parents. In most cases, I wouldn’t be either, but this is a unique
situation.

“Are
you still there?” my mother’s voice comes back.

“I’m
here,” I tell her.

“Your
father’s going to stay with me,” she says. “He’s calling the potential buyers
right now and he and I are going to discuss the possibility of having you move
in there.”

“Sounds
great, Mom,” I tell her. “Let’s get together soon and we can go over the
details.”

“All
right, sweetheart,” she says. “You have a good night, now.”

“You
too, Mom,” I respond. “Love you.”

“Love
you too, dear.”

I
hang up and a moment later, I realize what just happened.

My
mom and dad would never go for just letting me buy their house outright. That
comes from the same stupid pride that made my dad refuse my offer to help them
with their mortgage for a while.

There’s
one major trait that I got from my mom, and that is the profound ability to get
people to come around to my way of thinking. It doesn’t always work at first,
but if worse comes to worse, we both have unmatched skill in convincing others
not only to go along with what we want, but that it was the other person’s idea
in the first place.

Mom’s
been telling me for years that I should save my money and just move home. I’ve
always told her that I wanted to make it on my own, and if I couldn’t even
afford an apartment, then I had bigger problems than just money.

She
just convinced me to move back home. Not only that, she convinced me to take
over their mortgage, all while I was thinking that I was the one coming up with
the heroic solution.

I
try to tell myself that I’m digging into this too deep, that they’re just in a
bad position and that pride can only go so far anymore, but this is exactly
something my mom would do. It’s not even out of character that she’d use the
looming threat of her cancer to add weight to the plan.

I
don’t know if she really believes that I’m incapable of making it on my own, or
if that line of tripe is just her way of trying to get me to visit more, be
around them more.

Of
course, she’s never really been the sentimental type. We get along really well
when we don’t talk about anything even remotely personal, but she’s always
chided me on every decision I’ve ever made, always telling me that “mother
knows best” and various similar versions of the thought.

Regardless
of anything, it’s hard to fight the realization: my mom just played me.

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 liked 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 nine 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.”