by Nancy Adams
The room resounded with nine unanimous ayes, each of them a nail in the coffin of Bormann’s tenure at the company. Sam took this moment to fix Bormann with a steely glare, his vicious eyes boring into his enemy, a flame burning so brightly that with any more enthusiasm it would have burst from his eyes as lasers and burned two holes through Bormann. His whole look told Bormann to fuck off and never show his face at Techsoft again.
After the vote, Bormann left post-haste without bothering to shake hands with a soul, and the rest of the board finished up by looking through candidates for the vacated board member role. As Calloway was moving up to CEO and Bormann was leaving the company all together, there was a vacancy on the board. They spent an hour going through the various candidates until they decided to bring aboard Sarah Cortez. She was currently the head of development at Techsoft’s Joy-Box branch. Alongside Sam, Cortez had helped develop the console and was only months away from releasing its next-generation update, a feat that Sam had left entirely up to her.
“Hey, I don’t wanna sound biased,” Sam had said when they were going over the candidates, “but Sarah was instrumental in us breaking the big three in the games market. There’s a reason why Techsoft is now so synonymous with the gaming world, and that’s Sarah. She makes bold and swift decisions and I think she’ll be a very good fit for us.”
After that, the meeting was over.
Having said his goodbyes to everyone and leaving the building, Sam was driven by limousine to his Hollywood mansion. Three years before, he had bought a beautiful palatial house that was modeled on an old Spanish villa. It was all white facades, terracotta-tiled roofs and large archways with huge windows to allow the house to become flooded with light, as well as opening the inside up to a panoramic view of the two-and-a-half-acre estate that it was immersed in. Inside it held ten bedrooms, twelve bathrooms, an indoor swimming pool, a bowling alley and a discotheque. Outside it had four tennis courts, a working vineyard, stables and another swimming pool. It was a house fit for royalty.
The main reason Sam had bought it wasn’t for its splendor, however, but because it brought him closer to Techsoft headquarters in L.A. It also allowed Jess to have friends from the local affluent neighborhoods and go to a local school with them. As the years had gone by, he’d felt more and more guilty for isolating Jess at the Cliff Face, where she only had himself, Maud and Jenna for company most of the time. In L.A. at least he could send her to school and she could have friends stay over. It was only fair that his daughter get a childhood.
When Sam’s limousine pulled up at the mansion, his footman Grayson opened the door for him. Having thanked Grayson, he strolled confidently inside the opulent house. The moment he reached the large marble hallway, however, Sam felt his inner enthusiasm dissolve as he heard the raised voice of Jenna rebuking someone upstairs. Immediately he knew who it was that she was arguing with. The same person that she was always arguing with: Jess.
As Sam went up the marble staircase, the voices became more distinct.
“You have your own dresses that your father has bought you,” Jenna was saying. “Why do you have to steal my things when you have your own?”
“Because they’re not yours,” came the angered voice of the ten-year-old Jess. “Not one of them was bought with your money.”
“How do you know that? How dare you? You think I didn’t have a life before your father—well you’re wrong.”
Sam recoiled slightly when he heard Jenna’s answer. Why does she have to play up to her? he asked himself while walking across the landing toward Jess’s bedroom. She should just take back the dress, Sam continued in his head, rather than get involved in an argument.
As he approached the open doorway, the girl and the woman continued to spit venom at each other inside.
“And what’s this?” Jenna cried out.
“That’s my drawer, you shouldn’t go in there.”
Sam came around the corner of the doorway to find Jenna opening Jess’s dresser and going through it. The young girl was standing behind her with an angered look.
Noticing Sam in the doorway, both of them turned to him sharply.
“Look what she’s done,” Jenna exclaimed in annoyance when she saw him, thrusting a ruby-red, silk Armani knee-length dress in his face.
Looking down at it as she held it there, Sam saw that something had been spilled on it.
“And then look at this,” Jenna continued, waving a diamond necklace in front of him. “I found this in her drawer just now.”
“Dad, she has no right to go through my things,” Jess complained.
“Jenna, can you come out of her room, honey?” Sam said to his girlfriend.
She darted her eyes at him and in an indignant tone said, “Don’t take her side. Not again.”
“I’m not doing that, Jenna. It’s just that if this is to be a peaceful negotiation, then it’s best if you go wait in another room while I get all of your things back. Okay?”
He looked at Jenna softly and at the sight of his gentle blue eyes, her indignation melted a little.
She let out a sigh, shrugged her shoulders and left the room. Sam closed the door after her and sat down on his daughter’s bed. The room was the ideal of all little girls of Jess’s age. It was very big and contained a king-size four-poster bed fit for a princess. In one corner stood a huge flat-screen television in an area named the entertainment zone, with countless consoles, a karaoke machine and other gadgets there too. The walls were covered in posters of the latest teen idols and the floor was covered in toys, beanbags, and inflatable furniture.
As Sam sat there, Jess came and joined him, seating herself on the other end of the bed.
“Man, she has a problem,” the girl muttered impudently as she sat down.
“But do you have to give her one?” Sam replied, looking his daughter square in the eyes.
“Dad, I was only borrowing her dress and a couple of pieces of jewelry. I was gonna put it straight back but she came home early. Me and Kim were playing dress up and we wanted to take our pictures wearing it. It was fun. Then she comes back and starts shouting at us. She shouted at Kim as well, Dad. It’s so embarrassing that she seems to think it’s okay to shout at my friends. Kim went home because of it.”
“Okay, I agree, she shouldn’t fly off the handle like that. But you should’ve asked. They are her things and you have no right to just go into our room and take them.”
“But if I’d have asked, she would’ve said no.”
“Then you should’ve listened and not worn them.”
“She wasn’t supposed to even find out. She said she was going to her friend Donna’s place out in Malibu. She’s usually gone for at least two hours when she goes, but today she came back after only an hour.”
“That’s no excuse, Jess,” Sam put to her. “Can’t you just try and not provoke her, huh? At least until Maud comes back from her holiday.”
“Dad, I do as you told me, I try to avoid her most of the time.”
“But taking her things without permission is not avoiding her, is it? Sometimes I think you do it just to upset her.”
“Daddy,” Jess exclaimed softly as she slid across the bed and put her arms around him, resting her head upon his shoulder, “how could you say such things?”
“You know me and Jenna have been together for nearly six years, Jess. Maybe one day we’ll get married and then what?”
“Don’t say that,” Jess said from his shoulder.
“But I want us to be a family, Jess.”
“But we are without Jenna.”
Sam sighed. In the previous years, things between Jenna and Jess hadn’t improved since that fateful day upon the beach. In fact, they had worsened, and the two fought religiously. Jess couldn’t accept Jenna so soon after saying goodbye to her mother, and she did everything to sour things.
“I gotta go,” Sam said to his daughter after they’d sat for a while.
She moved off of him and he stood up.
Facing her, he said, “Do you love me?”
“Of course, Daddy. It hurts that you need to ask.”
“Then if you love me, Jess, be better to Jenna. Try for me.”
Jess frowned slightly before telling him that she would. Sam bent down and kissed his daughter on the forehead before leaving the room. After closing the door behind him, he went down the long corridor to his own room where he found Jenna sitting on their bed looking down at her stained dress.
Looking up at Sam when he entered, she said in a teary voice, “Look what she’s done, Sam. She’s ruined it.”
“I’ll get you another one.”
“But this dress meant so much to me. I got it when we flew to the Milan fashion week last year. It was a present from Giorgio Armani himself when we stayed at his villa. It meant more than just a dress; it was a cherished memory. And now it’s ruined.”
“I’m sorry, Jenna.”
“You needn’t apologize for her, Sam. You’re always apologizing for one of us to the other. I should just face it—she’s never going to accept me.”
Sam came and sat down next to Jenna on the bed, placing his arm delicately around her shoulders. He leaned in and kissed her neck with little pecks, making her smile.
“I accept you,” he whispered softly into her ear. “Isn’t that enough?”
Beaming all over, she replied, “Yes—but she’s a part of you.”
“Just give it time.”
“Sam, it’s been long enough now.”
He took his face away from her neck and looked at her with a bemused frown.
“What’re you saying, Jenna?”
“I love you, Sam. I love you dearly. But it can’t go on like this, even you have to admit that. So I guess what I’m saying is that we either have to call it a day and move on, or Jess has to go into a boarding school.”
“Whoa!” Sam exclaimed, coming away from her entirely, so that he was now standing in front, looking down at her with incredulity. “I can’t believe what you’re saying,” he went on. “You can’t give a father ultimatums like that. Eventually she’ll have to accept you, Jenna.”
“She’ll never accept me, Sam. We need to face up to it. If you want to keep me around, I’m afraid she’ll have to be away a lot more. I’ve been looking into it.”
“You’ve been looking into it!?”
“Yes,” she replied firmly. “She’ll be away for most of the year and during the summer, I’ll disappear off somewhere while you two get all the time you want alone together.”
“Jenna, this isn’t a solution.”
Jenna stood up and came over to him.
Placing her hands on his arms and looking him dead in the eyes, she pronounced, “It’s the only one whereby you get to keep me.”
With that, she walked out of the room, leaving him standing in the middle of it, unable to comprehend what had just happened. She hadn’t even asked about the board meeting. It was as if her stupid dress was more important than anything else. And it wasn’t just a one-off occasion where her fury made her forget herself. Jenna rarely ever wanted to know anything of Sam’s world and often stopped him if he talked about the company.
It had been so different with Marya. Techsoft was so much a part of them and they would talk of it excitedly for hours. But Jenna didn’t want to know, even when he would talk of the breakthroughs in psychiatry that could be achieved with the technology he was developing. Eventually, Sam had simply stopped mentioning the company all together.
For all his achievements in the boardroom, Sam had been unable to make a harmonious home. He was constantly being torn between his daughter and his girlfriend, and this latest desire of Jenna’s to rid the house of Jess pulled at the strings of Sam’s mind ever more.
Shaking his head, he walked off into the bathroom and began taking a shower. Underneath the spray, he allowed the water to gradually wash away his cares. And anyway, he was thinking, it’s not like I’ll be here for the next few days. It was true, he was flying to New York that night and wouldn’t be back for four days. He hoped that in that time, Jenna would cool down and forget this nonsense about sending Jess to boarding school.
He hoped.
CHAPTER THREE
Jules lay flat upon his belly on the roof of a house. He was suspended there by a rickety old ladder that hung from the peak of the sloping roof, clinging onto it with his free hand while the other did repairs. Around his waist he wore a tool belt and was currently fixing some loose tiles on a house that he’d been working on the last three weeks. It was the middle of spring so the California weather was cool and there was a slight breeze blowing. Every so often, a sudden gust of wind would wobble him on the ladder and he’d throw himself onto his front, gripping the ladder with his knees. Each time this happened, he would wonder what an old fart like him was doing up on this roof in the first place. This is a young man’s game, surely, he’d say to himself.
After a couple of hours, he was done and gingerly made his way down off the roof, his body aching and the ladder wobbling the whole time. When he reached the ground, he walked across the huge lawn that adjoined the large four-bedroom house. As he moved, his old body ached and his spine felt as though it wanted to pull itself clean away from his back. He’d worked every day these past three weeks to get the house all ready and his aging body sure as heck felt it.
Soon, he was at the large shed in the corner of the garden. When he entered it, he found the back of Jose facing him. The young man was bent over the sink cleaning the brushes off, having spent his day painting the inside of the house.
“You all done, kid?” Jules asked.
Without turning around, Jose replied that he was, before adding, “You finished with the roof, old man?”
“Yes, I have and my back’s aching like a liar’s tongue.”
This typically made Jose laugh. He always loved the old man’s odd little idioms. They were so far away from the Mexican ones that he mostly knew and always brought a smile to his lips. He and Jules had worked together now for almost three years since they’d both worked a job for another man named Lester. Lester was a tight-ass contractor who saw the desperation in Jules and Jose’s eyes the day they both came to him looking for a job. Seeing that they needed the job more than he needed them, he did what most men do when they see someone in need: he took full advantage of that fact and used it to bargain both of them into poor wages.
However, Lester underestimated the cunning of his employees. While he was working them to the bone for six months, Jules and Jose secretly saved up some money so that they could get a truck of their own, some tools and start up by themselves. It was a wonderful feeling telling Lester to go screw himself the day they left.
Since then, the two had worked together and Jules had done his best to teach the young guy what little he knew. For all his youthful exuberance, Jose was a fast learner, and in the three years that their little home improvement company had been going, they’d been able to take on bigger jobs. Jules hoped that ‘Hernandez-Lee Improvements’ would someday grow into something that he could sit back and be proud of. He dreamed of the day he could get some other younger guys to do the physical stuff while he planned everything. He wondered how many more years of hard graft he had left in him and was certainly feeling the strain of it all now. At sixty, Jules felt that his days of clambering up ladders were coming to an end.
Having gotten the ladders down and everything cleaned up in the garage, they packed the stuff up and placed it all in the back of their rusted-up little Toyota pickup. Then, as Jose waited in the truck, Jules went and got the money.
A short while later he was back, handing Jose his share.
“Mrs. Hernandez will be very happy,” Jose said as he took his cut.
“I hope so,” Jules replied.
He started the engine and drove them out of there, the pair sinking lazily into their seats. Both of them had worked hard all day and were feeling languid as they passed through the surrounding streets
on their way to Jose’s place in East Los Angeles.
“So how’s your woman?” Jose asked after several minutes of silence.
“She’s good, kid. Happy as can be with the boy. I just wish I didn’t need to work so hard and got to see a little more of their happiness. Plus, if I was around more, I’d maybe be able to do some more about that asshole next door.”
“He still giving you shit?”
“Not me personally. But he sure as hell gives his wife and kids a lot of shit. Especially now he’s lost his job again. I just hope that he gets himself arrested and goes away for a little longer than six months this time.”
“You should let me bring down some homies. Teach that motherfucker how to treat his woman right.”
Jules grinned to himself and repeated the words ‘his woman’ to himself, finding it ironic that at the same time as wishing to stand up for the fairer sex, Jose also referred to her in regards to her husband, as belonging to him—his woman! Jules didn’t say anything though, understanding that the kid’s heart was in the right place.
“That would be wonderful,” Jules said to Jose. “But you got a kid on the way and the last thing you wanna do is go breaking skulls and getting yourself arrested.”
“I wasn’t gonna break his skull. Just a leg or two.”
“Well, a fine father you’ll make when you’re in jail while your wife gives birth to your first child!”
Jose grinned and shook his head.
“I weren’t counting on getting caught.”
“Obviously! No crook ever goes into anything with the idea of being caught,” Jules exclaimed with a grin. “But low and behold, the county jails are full of assholes that weren’t supposed to get caught.”
This made Jose laugh.
