“Nothing.” She listened to her brother’s silent disbelief for three long seconds, then got to her feet and walked out of the restaurant. Out on the sidewalk, with her back to her father inside, she said, “Dad shouldn’t have called you.”
“I know you, Bev. Something happened, and now you’re running away from it. Boyfriend problems? Mean boss?”
“That is not it.” She wandered away from her father’s gaze to stand in front of a manicurist next door. “Actually, I need to find a new job.”
“Aha,” he said.
“I was fired.”
“And now you doubt yourself and want to throw away your entire career at the first setback.”
“I’m not throwing anything away.” It was she who’d been chucked. “It’s too late for me to find a permanent teaching position for the fall anyway. Like it or not, I am available to deal with Fite, and they just might need me.”
“You can’t do what other people need. You have to do what’s right for you.” His voice softened. “You love teaching. You’ve stood up to Dad’s bitching about it for years, which was great. I always backed you up there.”
“Maybe this is what I need.” Bev took a deep breath. “Did you know I made more money typing W-2’s into a computer last summer as a temp than I did educating children? Hilda paid more than most, but it was probably still less than you pay your secretary—administrative assistant—whatever.”
“Some cardiologists make less than Gwen does.”
“Point is, if I ever want to buy my own home, quit the summer jobs, upgrade my car, save for my retirement, I’m going to have to figure something out.”
“Figure what out? You’ll get a fortune when you sell Fite.” He paused. “Right?”
She didn’t want to tell him how little she’d agreed to take from Ellen. “I refuse to bankrupt her. She’s family.”
“Not going to—Bev. How much?”
“You don’t understand. None of you understand. Fifty thousand is a fortune to me, and to her, I’m sure—”
“That’s it? For the entire company? Oh, Bev. This is a perfect example of how you’re too damn nice. Really, it’s pathological. Give the phone to Dad. He’s going to tie you up until I get over there. Are you at that taco truck in Santa Ana?”
She gritted her teeth. “Will you listen to me? I am not being nice.” How she hated that word. “And besides, maybe I won’t sell it at all. I have a chance here to do something different.”
“Even if it’s all wrong for you.”
“Exactly,” she said, then closed her eyes while he crowed into the phone.
“Run, baby, run.”
“Oh, be quiet.” She looked up at the hazy platinum sky above the strip mall. Her brother was rich, successful, crafty, and insufferable. “I’m just looking at all my options.”
“I don’t think taking on that company right now would be a good option for anyone, Bev. Except as a tax write-off.”
“You haven’t been there. It’s a little rough around the edges at the moment, but there’s a real history you can feel, people with passion—”
“Grandfather was Fite’s heart and soul. I read that in his obituary in the Times.”
“There are other people there with heart and soul. I felt it.” She heard him snort. “And don’t rag on my feelings, you dork. If it doesn’t work out I’ll just get another teaching job. Any money I get”—earn, she added silently—“from Fite will help me be sure this time. I’ll approach a school as an investor, not as some underling.”
“Find another teaching job now,” he said. “No need to pretend you’re something you’re not.”
“Pretend?” She squeezed the phone. “I’m not pretending. I’m exploring. Grandfather left this company to me, and nobody really knows why. He must have wanted—”
“No offense, but if Grandfather wanted somebody to actually take over, he would have left it to me. Mom says he was just trying to piss off Ellen.”
“No offense? I’m not in first grade anymore, Andy. I didn’t get an MBA, but my GPA and SAT’s kicked your ass. Managing children takes a hell of a lot of quick thinking, guts, and creativity.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Of course you’re smarter than I am, you always were. But you’re too nice. You’re a preschool teacher, not an asshole. From what everybody says, Grandfather was. Not to brag, but look at me. And Dad. To succeed in business, you have to be. Look what Grandfather built all by himself, from nothing. He wouldn’t have given Fite to the nicest person in the family if he thought she’d actually be crazy enough to keep it.”
Bev looked at her father through the glass as he picked at the black beans on his plate with his fingers. “Nicest person in the family?”
“You’re a chronic do-gooder,” Andy said, laughing. “I can just imagine you in management, going around trying to make everybody feel good about themselves. Nobody would get any work done. They’d walk all over you, Bev.”
She swung away from the restaurant so her father couldn’t see how angry she was. “Maybe Grandfather did leave Fite to me for a reason,” she said in the voice she would use with the most difficult, ignorant, obstinate five-year-old. “Maybe it wasn’t just to teach Ellen a lesson. Maybe he wanted me to get in there and change the whole feel of the place. Me, the stupid nice one. Why is that impossible?”
“Because it contradicts absolutely everything we know about him?”
“They need me.” She took a deep breath. “You know, when I visited, there was a grown woman crying in the bathroom?”
“Better than at her desk,” Andy replied.
“See? That’s why he didn’t leave it to you. What kind of attitude is that?”
“A realistic one,” he said. “You have no idea how hard it is to manage people. Real people, not miniature ones.”
“Do the people who work for you cry in the bathroom?”
“How the hell would I know? So long as they don’t take too long, it’s none of my business.”
“But it is,” she said. “They’ll work better if they’re happy.”
“Oh yeah? You’ve got studies to prove that?”
She glared at a parked SUV. “I bet there are.”
“So you think you’re up for that?” he said. “Completely transform a corporate culture? One devoted to fitness, you crazy person? This from a girl who forged a doctor’s note to get out of P.E. In fifth grade. What, kickball was too hard?”
That was the only time she’d ever been caught. “You try running the six-hundred-yard dash with brand-new C-cup breasts and no bra.”
“You could have asked Mom for one.”
“None of the other fifth graders wore bras back then,” she said. “I would have been teased even more than I was already.”
He snorted. “You won’t be able to wave around a doctor’s note when you’re the boss. Everyone depends on you.”
“I know all about that, believe me. You think little kids take care of themselves?”
“It’s different, Bev. How would you feel if I told you I thought I could be a better preschool teacher than you, tomorrow, without any training or experience?”
She closed her eyes and rubbed her thumb along the edge of the cell phone. “Maybe you could,” she muttered, feeling in her heart the little-sister worship she’d struggled with all her life.
“No, Bev, I couldn’t. I’d suck at it. And you’d suck at managing. You know why? Because you hate conflict. You’ve been avoiding me since last year, ever since you found out I broke up with Julie. And I’m your brother—you think I didn’t notice? You think I was too busy to notice my little sister didn’t reply to my emails?”
She flinched. “I just couldn’t believe it. She was so cool. And she really loved you.”
“You can’t avoid people when you’re the boss. Especially over crap like that.”
Bev let her mind drift away, past her view of the L.A. glare, far from the stink of the manicurist’s acetone wafting out through the doorway. Inside
the restaurant her father was probably getting restless, eager to return to his new wife who wanted to produce more satisfying offspring. “I’d better get back to Dad. I kind of abandoned him.”
The phone was quiet for a moment. “Letting Ellen or outside management take over is the nicest thing you can do for everyone there,” he said. “From what I hear, they need expert help. Not you.”
But she barely heard him. Her thoughts had fled north. “Thanks for the advice, asshole.”
He let out a short laugh. “We done here?”
“Please. Get back to work.”
They clicked off. Bev wandered slowly back inside to where her father was scowling at the chaos of tortilla, aluminum foil, and rice on his plate.
Anderson took the phone from her. “He knock some sense into you?”
Bev sat down, reached for her cup, then froze. “Not exactly,” she said, realization growing. Her gut knew it first, and her heart swelled, filling her chest with pressure. She looked up into her father’s concerned scowl, surprised with herself, and felt a grin spread across her face.
All these people—from her family to her ex-boss to the damnably imperious Liam Johnson—thought so little of her.
Well, to hell with them.
“I’m driving up to San Francisco tomorrow,” she said.
Chapter 5
Bev sat in the hard chair across from Ellen’s empty desk and inhaled slowly through her nose, telling herself she had nothing to be afraid of. She looked at her watch. Exhaled slowly out of her mouth. Two minutes, she’d said. Almost thirty minutes ago. The drive up from Orange County had taken seven hours, two more than expected, and she’d come directly to the Fite office in San Francisco eager to get her conversation with Ellen over with. Her nerves were intermingled with exhaustion and hunger and thirst. She should have stopped for an early meal first, and the thought of a tall glass of iced tea was driving her mad.
Should she get up and go look for her aunt? She lifted her bag to her lap and confirmed her water bottle was still empty. She organized the gum, pen, cell phone, and notebook again. Took out the cell, scrolled through her contacts, glanced over her shoulder at the door, reaffirmed her ringtone and backdrop settings, put it back in the bag next to the wrinkled pack of spearmint sugarless. She had already eaten off her lipstick seven times and worked a thread loose on the hem of her blouse.
There was no reason to be afraid of her mother’s sister. Ellen wouldn’t be happy to hear the deal was off, but she’d adjust. And in time, the family would have the opportunity to develop a closeness they hadn’t had in Bev’s lifetime.
Ellen strode into the room and dropped a binder the size of a late-model microwave oven on the desk.
No big deal.
“Please tell me,” Ellen said, clipping the ends of her words as she eased herself into her chair, “that I misunderstood your little message.” She fixed Bev with a laser gaze.
Bev tried to keep her posture casual, but her long, awkward legs twitched like a gazelle, ready to bolt across the urban savanna out to her RAV4. “I am sorry, Ellen. I know you must be very disappointed.”
Ellen held up her hand, the white tips of each French-manicured finger reminding Bev of Elmer’s glue. “Sorry? Please,” she said. “You went back to your boring little life and starting thinking this one would be more exciting. Right?”
“That’s not—”
“You got to dreaming of yourself as someone glamorous and special,” she continued. “Your own fashion company! Wow! What a bomb!”
Bev’s anxiety turned cold. “That is not it.”
Ellen made a disgusted noise in her throat. “I don’t have time for this.” She shoved a paper towards her. “Here’s my final offer. Take it, or I walk.”
“You what?” She flinched inwardly at the anger in Ellen’s smooth, beautiful face, then slowly reached for the paper.
“Look at that. All itemized. I tried to keep it simple.” Ellen flipped open her laptop screen. “This is your last chance to get anything out of a confused old man.”
Bev glanced down at the sheet in her hands with two bullet-pointed paragraphs. One listed a promise of a lump-sum cash payment of a hundred thousand dollars. The second was titled “Cabin In Tahoe” and noted an address, website, and appraisal value of nine hundred and sixty thousand.
She gave up on the relaxed breathing and gaped at her. “I couldn’t take this. You don’t have to give me anything. I just want to work here.”
Ellen turned a wild gaze on her. “I can make some very talented people interested in this company, pros from real companies. In New York, a real city. I want to get Fite into the big leagues too much to let Ugly Betty come in here and mess it up for fun.”
Bev sat up taller, her pride stinging. “I’m not going to mess anything up.”
“Exactly.” Ellen handed over another paper. “Here’s where you sign.”
Bev smoothed the first paper over her lap with her palms, making no move to take the contract Ellen shoved towards her. Two weeks ago, she’d been happy to give Ellen whatever she wanted, but now she knew she’d been too hasty. She met her eyes. “I’m not signing anything. I’m sorry.”
Ellen looked at her watch. “If you don’t sign that within the next five minutes, I’m going to hand over my resignation, effective immediately. Without me or my father, an over-promoted, color-blind jock will be the only person with any executive experience in the company. On an average day I work thirteen hours, but compared to my father I was a part-timer. An hour from now, an email will go out forwarding all calls and complaints to you. If they can’t find you, they’ll page you over the PA—which is even wired into the bathrooms. Which is good, because that’s where you’ll be hiding.”
Bev’s palms were damp; she wiped them on the sides of her thighs. Maybe she was fooling herself—seduced by a fantasy, of false glamor, of being the boss—but she hadn’t driven all the way up from L.A. just to give up in the first five minutes. Besides, Ellen had to be bluffing. “What about Richard? The CFO?”
“He hasn’t been allowed back in the building since our first little negotiation.”
Bev felt a surge of guilt. And anger. She doubted Liam even felt guilty about that. “I see.”
“Take it.” Ellen stood up to glide the paper over to her. “You can’t possibly expect me to offer you anything more.”
“If you really think I’m that bad for Fite, why leave? Why not stay and protect it from me?”
Sinking back down into her chair, Ellen’s hard face twisted into a half-smile. “You’ll learn your lesson soon enough,” she said. “And I’ll get Fite then.”
“You think I’ll give up and sell to you anyway.”
“Not sell. Give,” she said. “Three minutes.”
Bev looked down at the paper in her lap, studied the numbers, the address in Meeks Bay. I bet it’s beautiful.
Ellen smiled.
“You just have this kind of money lying around?” Bev asked. Having had a salary of less than thirty thousand a year, Bev couldn’t conceive of what it would be like to have so much all at once.
“Daddy may not have been clear-headed at the end, but before that he knew which one of us really loved him. He was understandably generous.”
Bev shook her head, dispelled the fantasy. She would never be able to live with herself. The last thing she wanted were deeper divisions in her family. “If you let me work alongside you, Fite would pay my salary. You wouldn’t have to give up anything.”
“Just everything that matters,” Ellen said. She clicked the end of a pen, flicked it across the desk like a spear.
“I can’t take this,” Bev said.
“Two minutes.”
“Ellen, please reconsider. I’m not going to mess anything up. I’m an organized, intelligent person, I work hard, I—”
Ellen blew her nose loudly into a tissue and walked across the room to an open file box. With her back to Bev, she lifted an ornate ceramic vase filled with peacock f
eathers off a shelf and began wrapping it in newspaper.
Jesus, what a bitch. Her mother had given up on her only sister thirty years ago. Even now, after the funeral of their father, she expressed no regrets about their cold war. Bev stared at Ellen’s narrow, rigid back and thought, I can see why.
So maybe a family reunion was unlikely. But Ellen had to be bluffing about quitting. After a lifetime of working at Fite, she couldn’t just walk away—
“Sixty seconds.” Ellen dropped the box on the floor with a thud.
“I’m not going to sign it like this.” Bev struggled to think fast enough. She fell back on what she knew best. “How about I get us a snack, and we can talk about it—”
“Last chance, Betty.” She strode over to her. She’d slung a large bag over her shoulder and held the box in her arms, the peacock feathers curving up behind her left ear like green and purple iridescent antlers.
Bev glanced at the papers in her lap and got to her feet. “I can’t, Ellen. Surely you can wait—”
“Just sign it.” Eyes fixed off into space, Ellen waited, unmoving.
Bev studied her cold, bored profile. She sat back down. “No,” she said softly. “Not like this.”
Alarm flickered across Ellen’s forehead, then vanished. Without meeting Bev’s eyes she bent at the knees, plucked the paper out of Bev’s grasp, and strode out of the room holding her box.
Bev sat in the empty office, the chaos of unfinished designs—bolts of fabric leaning in corners, sketches and photos on presentation boards, samples piled up on racks and conference tables—scattered around the room like abandoned children. The phone rang, and off behind her she heard the PA echo through the hall asking for somebody whose name she didn’t recognize.
“Whoops,” Bev whispered.
It was time. To everything there was a season, et cetera et cetera. Liam lifted the overflowing box under his desk and hauled it to the door.
You're a sentimental dork. He was done with this business, thanks to Ed, yet he was carrying home mementos like an eighth-grade girl.
He looked down into the box at the sketches and tear sheets—a Macy's ad for the first pair of Fite the Man shorts he'd designed on top of the pile—and reassured himself he could hardly leave behind the evidence of his Achilles heel. Ellen would probably move into his office before lunchtime and comb over every inch, mocking and taking and destroying like a ravenous, sarcastic locust.
Love Handles (A Romantic Comedy) Page 6
