That New York Minute

by Abby Gaines

  Twice in his life Garrett had begged. Big mistake.

  The waiter arrived. He set down two beers and a bowl of nuts, picked up the old glasses and started to leave. Dwight cleared his throat significantly, then lowered his gaze a fraction to indicate a ring of liquid on the table. The waiter muttered an apology as he wiped the table, double-quick.

  Garrett took a slug of his second drink of the night, which at last took the edge off the headache he’d been squinting through all day. He just wanted to get through this meeting, or whatever it was, and go home to bed.

  His father cleared his throat again, but this time it wasn’t in lieu of a spoken command. “Many happy returns of the day.”

  His dad would never say Happy Birthday if he could find a more formal alternative.

  “Thanks.” Garrett forced himself to respond reasonably, instead of saying something inflammatory like, What do you care?

  A woman carrying a guitar squeezed past their table, followed a moment later by two guys, one of them also lugging a guitar case. Must be the band, headed for the small stage in the far corner.

  “Did you. Do anything special?” Dwight asked. He never said um or uh, so any hesitation sounded like a full stop. “Thirty is. A milestone.” He took a quick drink.

  Two hesitations in the space of a minute. What was going on?

  “I got shortlisted for partner at KBC today,” Garrett said, buying himself time to work out his dad’s agenda.

  Why had he said that? What was the point of telling his father about a promotion that he didn’t intend to stick around to get? It wasn’t as if Dad would be impressed.

  He braced himself for a lecture about getting a “real job.” Namely, one in the armed forces, one that mattered.

  His father surprised him by saying, “Good.” He took another drink of his beer. Not his usual measured pace.

  “If I get the partnership—” shut up, Garrett warned himself, stop right there, you’re not doing this “—I’ll be chief creative officer.” Dammit, the alcohol he’d consumed over the past twenty-four hours had loosened his mouth.

  Dwight’s glass thudded onto the table. “Chief creative officer?”

  This was why Garrett should have stopped.

  “What would anyone there know about being an officer?” his father asked. “About discipline and structure?”

  “Nothing at all,” Garrett said with heartfelt relief. His father’s rigid adherence to discipline and structure were what had driven them apart, and Garrett’s choice of career had done nothing to fill the gap. Dwight derided the advertising industry as frivolous, billions of dollars spent giving people choices they didn’t need. As far as he was concerned, there was only one way to do anything: his way.

  As Dwight leaned forward the four metal stars on his collar denoting his rank, polished to a high gleam, caught the light. “Wouldn’t a job like that involve commanding a team?”

  “Leadership is part of it, yes.” Might as well give his father enough rope to hang him.

  “You don’t have the right attitude for that,” Dwight said. “You need to blend authority with a genuine interest in your men.”

  “I’m definitely not interested in men,” Garrett agreed, using flippancy, guaranteed to drive his father nuts, to mask his annoyance.

  Without knowing the first thing about it, Dwight had decided Garrett didn’t deserve the promotion. Garrett was tempted to prove him wrong. To stick around, win the partnership. Then quit, which would give Tony and the other partners a lesson in how not to run a partnership selection.

  Not worth the hassle, he decided. There were other agencies he could go to right away. Lots of them.

  Dwight was inhaling noisily, his face turning slightly purple. If Garrett had been one of his father’s “men,” he’d have feared imminent court-martial.

  “If you want to learn leadership, Garrett, you should get a real job,” Dwight said. “You could make something of yourself.”

  Here we go. Garrett drained his glass, glad he hadn’t been naive enough to think they could survive a whole meal. He stood. “See you around, Dad,” he said, confident it was highly unlikely. Madison Avenue might not be far from USUN, the United States Mission to the United Nations, where his father was an adviser, but their paths never intersected.

  “Sit down,” Dwight ordered.

  Yeah, right. Garrett wasn’t about to start obeying his father’s commands at this late stage. He left the role of the “good son” to his brother, Lucas.

  “Please,” Dwight said.

  Garrett stared. Dad learned a new word.

  When his father pointed at the chair, he sat down again.

  Dwight closed his eyes for a moment before he spoke. “I know this is a. Difficult day for you.”

  “But not for you?” Garrett asked.

  Irony was wasted on his father. “That’s why I wanted to see you.”

  His birthday, the anniversary of his mother’s death—not everything he’d told Rachel had been a lie—had been a difficult day every year for the past fifteen years. This was the first time Dwight had acknowledged it. “Are you sick?” Garrett asked.

  It would surely be divine retribution for the lies that had Rachel so riled, if his father suddenly confessed to a terminal illness. Not that Garrett felt the least bit guilty about Rachel. He’d done her a favor, telling her a plain truth last night. This morning, she’d got up his nose with her superiority and her dismissal of his abilities. She’d reminded him, in fact, of his father.

  Only she’d been far easier to topple than Admiral Dwight Calder. She didn’t have the backing of the U.S. Navy to make her feel infallible.

  “I’m not sick,” Dwight said.

  Relief rushed through Garrett. He tilted his chair back. “Then why are you here?”

  Over on the far side of the room, the band was running a sound check. In another five minutes, there’d be no possibility of conversation.

  “It’s time you and I made more of an effort with each other,” his father said.

  Garrett’s chair thumped back on to all four legs. “Are you going to tell me this was your idea?” he asked calmly.

  “Stephanie suggested it,” Dwight admitted.

  “Tell your wife to butt out.” Garrett kept his voice even, masking the upsurge of anger. He didn’t know why Stephanie should pick now, after all this time, to take an interest in his relationship with his father. He didn’t want to know.

  A whine of feedback came through the amplifier on the tiny stage, hurting his ears.

  “She’s your stepmother,” Dwight said with icy control.

  But they both knew that in this area, Dwight had never been able to control his son.

  Garrett stood again, and this time, nothing would induce him to sit back down. “Goodbye, Dad.”

  * * *

  RACHEL WAS DECIDEDLY on edge early Saturday morning as she mooched around her Washington Heights condo—not a great area, but the best she could afford when she’d bought the place two years ago.

  She’d been convinced Garrett would quit rather than give KBC a chance to fire him.

  Yet when he left the office last night with Clive— worrying in itself—The Shark didn’t appear to have cleared out his desk.

  Maybe he didn’t want to quit on his birthday, she thought, as she wiped the kitchen counter. If it was truly his birthday, and that wasn’t another lie.

  She tossed the dishcloth in the washing machine, and set about plumping up the cushions of her giant sofa. She’d never have predicted Garrett would be interested in the partnership in the first place. What if he didn’t quit after all?

  Their prospective client, Brightwater Group, was tickled pink at the prospect of not one but three fabulous ideas for their campaign, in exchange for giving feedback to the KBC board about the three partners designate. Rachel was beginning to feel like a contestant on America’s Next Top Ad Agency Partner.

  She hated those shows. She wasn’t a crier by nature, but she cried
when people got thrown out of the house, expelled from the island, kicked off the catwalk.

  I could be next. She felt nauseous just thinking about it. If Garrett did stick around, his slimy behavior today had given her a heads-up that he wasn’t about to play fair. If he wants a fight, he’ll get it. She would put the work in, she would leave nothing to chance and she would win.

  This would have to be her best campaign ever. She would have to be the best every step of the way. Starting with the meeting she, Garrett and Clive would attend at Brightwater’s offices on Monday.

  Rachel usually handled briefing meetings with ease. But this time the client would be directly comparing her with Garrett.

  What if they liked sleazy, lying, tardy but highly creative jerks?

  What if the client asked some off-the-wall question, to which she would say her usual, “Hmm, you make an excellent point, Ben/Jerry/Jack. I’d like to think about that and get back to you.” While Garrett would produce some amazing spontaneous insight.

  It didn’t bear thinking about. She needed to be even better prepared than usual, so she could at least look unrehearsed and intuitive. Okay, the logic was skewed…but that was what she had to do.

  Starting right now.

  An hour later, Rachel loaded her overnight bag into the trunk of a rented Ford Focus, along with a supply of Aunt Betty’s Apple Pies, courtesy of her very appreciative client—how many bottles of Calvin Klein fragrance had Garrett been given, huh?—and joined the weekend crawl out of Manhattan. Once she was through the Holland Tunnel, she stuck to the toll roads, and the traffic thinned right out.

  It was only eleven o’clock when she pulled into The Pines Mobile Home Park in Freehold, New Jersey. She followed the loop road, if you could call the vaguely circular stretch of gravel a road, around to her parents’ trailer.

  Her mom must have heard the crunch of her tires, because the door of the double-wide opened before Rachel switched off her engine.

  “Hi, Mom,” Rachel called as she grabbed her bag from the backseat. She loaded up an armful of pies, then closed the door with her butt.

  “Honey, did you tell us you were coming—oh, yum!” Nora Frye’s eyes lit up at the sight of the red-and-white pie cartons.

  Rachel kissed her cheek and handed over the booty. “Kind of a last-minute decision—is that okay?” Cell phone reception wasn’t great here, and it was always a hassle to phone the trailer-park office and hope they’d get a message to her parents.

  “That’s fine, though I guess we’ll have to cancel our trip to Paris,” her mother said gaily, leading the way inside. As she crossed the threshold, she raised her voice. “Burton, Rachel’s here!”

  “Did he work last night?” Rachel asked. Her dad’s burly build meant he easily found a job as a security guard whenever her parents’ other schemes fell through.

  “Got to bed at five,” her mom confirmed, “but he can wake up for you.”

  Rachel followed her mom to the small kitchen area. While Nora filled the kettle Rachel had given her last Christmas and set it on the stove, Rachel dug in her purse to produce a pack of real coffee. Her mom set the jar of instant she’d been opening back on the shelf, and reached high for the French press, covered with a film of dust.

  “So, what’s new?” Her mom squirted detergent into the press and began to wash it.

  “I made the partner short list at work.”

  Her mom gave a little squawk. “Hon, that’s fantastic!”

  “I know. Thanks.” Just thinking about it had Rachel grinning. She pushed aside the “I might get fired” aspect as she found some scissors in a drawer and snipped the top off the coffee pack. When she was certain her mom wasn’t watching, she tucked a folded twenty-dollar bill in the back of the drawer.

  By the time they’d carried their cups over to the table by the window, Rachel’s dad had emerged from the bedroom. He hugged Rachel before he pulled out one of the nonmatching chairs and sat. “That coffee for me, Nora?”

  Her mom slid the third mug toward him. While she fussed with cream and sugar, Rachel took the opportunity to stuff another twenty down the gap between the seat pad and the back of the built-in banquette she occupied. Anything more than twenty and her parents would get suspicious.

  Her dad took a sip of the hot coffee and let out a satisfied sigh. “Home is where the coffee is, right, Nora?”

  “That’s right, hon.” Nora blew him a kiss.

  Rachel tensed. Comments like that made her want to chime in with something like, “Home is where you put down roots. Where you decide to stick it out, no matter what.”

  Rachel blew on her coffee so she wouldn’t meet his eyes and feel compelled to disagree. Pointing out their fundamental differences in philosophy only led to circular arguments that, despite being right, she never won.

  “I’m hoping I can pick your brains,” she said, changing the subject. Her family came in very handy when she wanted to run ideas by them or have them try out a new product. It was her mom who’d said, “This is better’n I make, don’t you think, Burton?” the first time she’d tried an Aunt Betty’s apple pie.

  Which had inspired the eventual slogan “As good as Mom makes.” Aunt Betty’s had seen a nice upturn in sales as a result of that particular piece of creativity.

  In the past, Rachel had offered to pay them to be her own private focus group—it would help them financially, and she’d assured them KBC would pick up the tab—but they wouldn’t hear of it.

  “I’m pitching to a group that’s taken over a bunch of private colleges,” she said. “They’ll be rebranding and relaunching them, along with a finance company offering student loans. But we’ll just talk about the academic side today,” she added quickly.

  She’d learned not to discuss anything financial with her parents, however gently couched. I don’t think this email is actually from the president of Nigeria’s largest bank, Dad. Or, A hundred percent interest over three months implies a higher investment risk level than you might want to take.

  Instead, she tried to hide enough twenty-dollar bills that they could afford a few small treats. Hoping it was enough to stave off the need to pursue instant riches.

  “Sure, we can talk about that,” Burton said. “You want to start now?”

  “No hurry. I’ll stay over, if that’s okay.”

  “Great,” her mom said. “When I’ve finished my coffee I’ll wander out to the road—” where the cell phone signal was stronger “—and call LeeAnne. She’ll want to see you.”

  Good thing Rachel had plenty more twenties in her purse. Her younger sister, LeeAnne, was the mother of three-year-old twins. The twins’ father had taken off before they were even born, so LeeAnne depended entirely on her parents for backup. She usually tried to live within a few miles of Nora and Burton. Though as Rachel often pointed out, part-time work that paid a decent wage and allowed her time with the kids was hard enough to find without the added complication of moving so often.

  LeeAnne always agreed, but she still packed up and moved each time.

  “Seen any good ads lately?” Rachel asked her father.

  Her dad rumbled on about a Toyota truck commercial—TV with radio and print backup—that Rachel also considered pretty good. “But my favorite is that Lexus ad with the bridge,” Burton said.

  Rachel stiffened. “Really? You like that?” It was one of Garrett’s campaigns, the first one he’d done at KBC. “You don’t think it was bit over-the-top?”

  “Over-the-top!” her father scoffed. “It’s sheer genius.”

  Rachel grunted. A sound that reminded her of Garrett, as if she needed to think of him.

  “It sure would be convenient if you could win a beer company as a client, hon,” her mom joked. “Your dad won a gas grill in a raffle at work, so we thought we’d get some friends over to christen it. A few freebies wouldn’t go amiss.”

  Her parents had been here long enough to make friends to invite over. Could they actually be settling down? Rachel trea
ted it with a healthy dose of skepticism, but, still, it was a tantalizing thought.

  Rachel’s childhood was a blur of different homes—cheap apartments, trailers, the occasional small house. Sooner or later, the Fryes had left them all, most with a cheery toot of the horn to the neighbors, a few in the dead of night in the hope the landlord wouldn’t chase after them.

  It was amazing none of those landlords had tracked them down and taken them to court…but then, her folks were nice people who always meant well. Their creditors always seemed to end up excusing them.

  Rachel excused them, too. They were loving parents, and if she’d had to be particularly tenacious to burrow herself into each new school and earn the grades she wanted…well, that was character building. And it wasn’t as if Mom and Dad didn’t work hard or try to get ahead.

  The problem was their method of doing so.

  For as long as Rachel could remember, they’d been suckers for the promise of good times around the corner. Over and again, they’d uprooted themselves so Burton could chase after an exciting new job. Or borrowed more than they could afford to invest in a “sure thing.”

  Just once, they’d had a great return. They’d lent a thousand bucks to a guy who’d patented a new can opener, and got three thousand back. Other than that, to give it the most charitable interpretation, they were the unluckiest investors in the world.

  Rachel had long ago agreed to disagree with her parents. She loved them, but she didn’t want their lives, and she couldn’t share their excitement about the Next Big Thing. And they’d had enough of what they called her cynicism.

  They talked about harmless subjects until LeeAnne and the twins, Kylie and Dannii—named after the Minogue sisters—arrived for lunch. After they’d eaten and cleared away the dishes, the girls stayed at the table with crayons and coloring books, while the adults spread out in the living area, ready to bend their brains to Rachel’s latest problem. Her family treated it like a game, and with them it felt like one.