The Designer

by Aubrey Parker

  “When are you arriving?” I ask.

  “Ten minutes.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I need to get that check back. Don’t worry; I have another. My CFO yelled at me. The money has to come from the company, not me personally.”

  “I could have torn up the check. You didn’t need to fly out.”

  “This is actually on my way.”

  “Where?”

  He doesn’t answer. “You have a few hours free?”

  “Hours? To swap a check?”

  “I’ll explain when you get here. Clear the next few hours.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Apparently, I’m on a need-to-know basis. He’s talking to someone else.

  “I can’t just leave the shop,” I say.

  “Just put up the closed sign. I’ll reimburse you for whatever customers you lose. This is important, regarding that job you’re doing for me.”

  “I didn’t agree to do that job.”

  I put the check in the register when he gave it to me yesterday. I’m pretending it doesn’t exist until things make sense. I don’t like the idea of getting into bed with Expendable Chic. It feels too much like a songwriter finding their soulful melody turned into a jingle for cat food.

  “The car will take you. You don’t need to bring anything. Just, like, your purse.”

  Now his pushiness and presumption are grating on me. I haven’t agreed to anything, including his job. I have fittings booked, and I’m not going anywhere.

  “This is important, Stacy. And I’ll pay for your time.”

  “I’m not for sale.”

  “It’s part of the job.”

  Sigh. I guess I have to decide if I’m in or out. Looks like I’m in. I’ve already had a few ideas. Maybe, in my own little way, I can make a part of his trashy world a little less disposable.

  “Fine. But I can drive myself.”

  “Do you know where the airport is?”

  “Of course I know where the airport is.”

  “Not the big one. This is an executive airstrip near the FedEx hub.”

  Oh.

  “I don’t know where that is.”

  “Then take the car I sent. And bring the check.”

  The car is large, impressive, probably worth a bazillion dollars, and driven by my elementary school friend Jimmy. Hampton Brooks and his big-shot money can class up transportation, but when it comes to personnel, the local executive car service is limited to Williamsville drivers.

  I sit up front. We reminisce about the ups and downs of first grade nap time. Jimmy whistles when we arrive at the airstrip, taking in the sleek black form of the Expendable Chic jet.

  “You flying on that thing?”

  “Of course not. Thanks, Jimmy.” I wonder if I’m supposed to tip him. It seems insulting to do so, considering we know each other. I commit what feels like the lesser faux pas and stiff him.

  Jimmy pulls away, and I wonder how the hell I’m going to get home.

  Or what Hampton intends for us to do with the few hours he needs. There’s no coffee shop around here, no mall to wander while we talk. He hasn’t called a car for himself, or to take us anywhere.

  I look up at the jet. Hampton’s waiting on the lowered steps. But he’s not coming to me. Instead, he’s waiting for me to go to him.

  Inside the plane.

  Oh, shit.

  Being on this flight is like being in a posh hotel room with a city-sized view. The lone flight attendant offers me wine, champagne, whatever I want. I decline. I’m still mad at myself for letting the door close behind me without asking enough questions. I don’t even know where we’re going until we’re airborne. All I know is that I’ll be back in time for a late dinner.

  “Politics,” Hampton says. “They’re everywhere.”

  I was looking out the window. I look back over.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’d think I could do whatever I wanted since I own the company. But when I got back, two people told me I’d screwed up. My CFO said I wasn’t allowed to intermingle personal and business money, but it’s not like I was walking around with the Expendable Chic checkbook. And then my operations head told me I couldn’t just hire designers without running them by Todd.”

  “Who’s Todd?”

  “Design head at Expendable Chic.” He sips his champagne. “Like I said: politics.”

  “Designer Todd doesn’t like you hiring other designers,” I say, trying to keep up.

  “Not ones he hasn’t vetted. And I mean, I can obviously overrule whatever he says, but Todd gets bitchy. He’s hard for others to work with.”

  “Todd was going to be bitchy if he didn’t get a chance to approve me as a designer?”

  “Right. And my operations guy doesn’t like to work with Todd when he’s bitchy.”

  “Maybe Todd is the problem.”

  “Oh, Todd is definitely the problem.” Hampton sips again. “You sure you don’t want any champagne?”

  I have some champagne. This seems to be Hampton’s usual pace for working and thinking. I can barely keep up. Drinking might help.

  Apparently, there’s some shuffling required at Expendable Chic to make room for clothes that might eventually be manufactured based on my designs. Hampton talks like this is a new line. I don’t bother to point out the fact that I haven’t made any designs, and am not sure I want to.

  Todd controls the entire design wing. He makes $42k per year and doesn’t even have the official position Hampton says he’s taken on himself, but he still pulls all the puppet strings. Knows the best designers, has created a little kingdom wherein the lesser designers bow. I don’t ask. It’s a whole Todd situation. Somehow, it works, though, and the bottleneck here is that without Todd’s approval — of me — Hampton can’t shuffle enough to make room for my clothing line.

  Which I don’t want to design because I hate Expendable Chic.

  I also hate Hampton Brooks, but here he is right across from me on the plane, being cute and charming. It turns out, when he’s not trying to force small-town girls to admit their inferiority, he’s kind of fun. Funny, too. I get the feeling, based on his stories so far, that in his circle of rich guys he’s the prankster. The imp. That guy who came with Hampton before — Mateo Saint of the PEZA franchise according to Forage — is huge. Or at least he seems huge compared to Hampton, who is lean and athletic but not large at all.

  I wonder if I’m drunk.

  We land somewhere that’s decidedly not New York. Or Los Angeles. Hampton says it’s a hospital complex just a few hundred miles from my tiny hometown. And when I raise my eyebrows at the notion of a “complex,” Hampton explains that it’s a cancer facility, off-the-beaten-path just enough to offer the patients an escape. This isn’t the type of building hospital-goers dread visiting. If you’re unlucky enough to need to spend a lot of time in hospitals to start with, this little spot is the sort of complex you’re dying to visit.

  “What patients?” Because the way Hampton explained it before landing, he talked about them as if they were inmates. Not people who visited hospitals so much as lived in them.

  “Kids,” Hampton says.

  “Kids?”

  “You know. Kids with cancer.”

  A car drops us off at the front door, and we’re surrounded by small people — many in hospital gowns, several entirely bald, all of them clamoring for something. I’m reminded of how fish cluster near the shore when someone arrives with bread.

  “What?” Hampton says to the one clearly in charge — a tall girl of fifteen or so. “Does nobody feed you guys?”

  And I think, Oh my God; he’s bringing them food?

  But it isn’t food that’s now everywhere around us, in the small bags being pulled from large boxes coming from Hampton’s plane.

  So many clothes to go with the smiles.

  I’m in a lush parlor, not unlike the interior of Hampton’s plane. There’s a woman two seats away, in a poufy chair, rea
ding with her feet up. I don’t know who she is. She smiled when I entered, but Hampton didn’t make introductions before vanishing.

  We haven’t spoken much since our arrival. Too much happened too fast, and I’m still tipsy. Sorta shell-shocked, to be honest. First, there was the ambush plane ride, then the deluge of sick kids that I was emotionally unprepared for. I’d say I met a few while Hampton and the driver were handing out those little shopping bags, but “met” is giving our encounters too much gravity. A few of the girls asked my name. I told them, and they gave me theirs. One of them had my sister’s name: Emily. And all of them told me how pretty my blouse was, and how they hoped they got one just like it.

  We’re now in a residence building meant for family and friends of the patients. I haven’t asked, but from what I’ve seen, I gather that the entire place is a giant spa. Like a Make-A-Wish Foundation fantasy made concrete: a place where these kids can go and spend time in relative luxury, a respite from their pain and frightening existences.

  Beyond the wall is what looks like a large living room. Hampton told me to wait here. I hear several voices inside, but I can only distinguish two. Hampton and someone else loud and flamboyant. Probably Todd.

  “I’m glad I’m not in there,” the woman says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “In with the team,” she says. It’s not an explanation.

  A long moment passes. Apparently, this is all I’m going to get.

  “The Expendable Chic team, you mean,” I say.

  “Right.”

  “I thought the company was in New York.”

  “It is.”

  I shrug, but the woman is already back to her book.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, moving toward her and extending my hand. “I didn’t introduce myself.”

  “You’re Stacy, right?”

  I blink. “Yes.”

  “I’m Nancy.” Then: “We all know who you are.”

  “Who’s ‘we all’?”

  “Domestic design.” She says it like this is the name of a company department.

  “Is domestic design headquartered here?”

  Nancy laughs as if I’ve just uncorked the world’s most hilarious joke. She says, “This is a hospital.”

  “I know, but …”

  “As long as the residence building isn’t at capacity, Hampton likes to use it for our retreats.”

  “‘Retreats’?”

  “Yeah. You know. Retreats. To get away from the office for a while so that you can do good creative work. Haven’t you ever worked for a company that does corporate retreats?”

  “I’ve worked at my family’s alterations shop since I was sixteen.”

  Nancy nods. “Yeah, well.” She goes back to her book.

  “Why does everyone here know me?”

  “Because Todd has been throwing a fit since you were hired.”

  “I’m not hired.”

  “That’s what Todd said,” Nancy points out.

  Another moment passes. Getting information out of Nancy is like interrogating a banana.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”

  “It’s just Todd,” Nancy explains.

  “But …”

  “He’ll get over it.”

  “Get over what, exactly?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No.”

  “Well, Hampton will tell you.”

  Back to her book.

  I say, “Why are you here? At all, I mean?”

  “For the retreat. We do retreats four times a year. It’s a great place. They have mud baths and everything.”

  “But why a hospital? Why not a conventional spa?”

  “Oh. Well. We come here anyway.”

  Jesus. Come on, Nancy, help me out.

  If it’s possible, I think I understand less now than when I arrived.

  “Why do you come here anyway?”

  “For the kids.”

  I wait. Nancy gets the hint that she’s supposed to continue. She folds her book and sets it aside. “You know that Hampton donated a building in this complex, right?”

  I shake my head.

  “Well, he did. He meant for it to be a one-off donation, but then he got attached to some of the kids. He saw one of the boys wearing these threadbare pants and got the idea to donate some clothes. So he did. But he’d just tossed a bunch of stuff together, and what the kids went nuts for most — particularly the girls — were the most frivolous, stupid things. Like, halter tops. Socks with fringe. Dresses like something ‘80s hookers might wear. The dumbest of the dumb, but fun, you know? They were practically dress-up clothes. Anyway, the next time he came, Hampton brought something more middle-of-the-road. The stuff that went to the stores: fashionable but dumb, definitely impractical for a hospital where johnnies are the norm. But the kids ate it up. Couldn’t get enough. It’s like they got this big surge of variety and life. Life wasn’t all chemo and PT. The girls say they feel pretty. So, it’s become a thing. We have our retreats in this building, and we bring little gift bags for the kids, full of Expendable Chic clothes.”

  Nancy’s eyes are on me.

  “You think it’s stupid, don’t you?”

  But no. I don’t think it’s stupid at all.

  “Hampton says you’re not a fan of our clothes. It’s okay. Me either. It’s dumb stuff. Teenage going-out duds. Clothes I’d never let my daughter wear. Shit, it falls apart after two washes. But dumb or not, these kids love the hell out of it. So we keep doing it.”

  In the other room, I hear Todd issue some sort of vocalization. It might be a laugh, a shout, or a bark like a seal’s.

  “I’m glad I’m not in there,” Nancy says, picking up her book.

  CHAPTER NINE

  STACY

  AFTER THE MEETING WITH EXPENDABLE Chic’s design team is over — after I’ve met Todd, with his reluctant but ostentatious approval, and a bunch of other people whose names I’ve already forgotten — I end up back in the little living room where I met Nancy. It’s a wonderful room, well-appointed, but it still feels like a waiting room. Before I went in to meet the team, I sat here. Now that I’m done, it looks like I’ll sit here.

  A slight black man with a mustache comes through the double doors into the other room and approaches me. For some reason, it makes my skin crawl. Probably because I’m technically in a hospital, where all news is potentially dire.

  “Looks like he will be a bit longer, Miss Grace.”

  “Thanks …” I stall. Another name I’ve forgotten. I know he’s someone important. Director of Something-or-Other. Perhaps even Executive Director of Whatever I Can’t Remember. Not just Todd’s boss; Todd’s boss’s boss. You’d never know it, the way his hissy fits run the room.

  “Andre,” he says.

  “Please don’t call me Miss Grace.”

  “Stacy, then.”

  I look out the window. You’d never know this was a medical facility from here. Even the views are tranquil. I see trees. Meadow. Nothing but peace.

  Andre is standing by me. The door is ajar, and through the gap I can hear Hampton’s voice. “He wanted me to ask if you’d like to fly home now.”

  “In the plane?”

  Andre smiles. “That’s generally how we fly around here.”

  “I meant, in the company jet? Doesn’t he need to get back as well?”

  “The commercial airport isn’t far. There are usually seats available last-minute.”

  This takes a minute to dawn on me. “You mean he’ll fly back on a regular plane?” Even as I hear it, the words sound ridiculous to me. Why wouldn’t he? That’s how everyone in the world flies. But it feels strange to think of Hampton Brooks anywhere but on his elite jet.

  “They serve champagne in first class. I think he’ll survive.”

  Andre’s hand is out. Apparently, this is an offer they expect me to take. I assumed I’d be flying back with Hampton. I should be relieved that I don’t have to. I hate that guy.

  But o
ver the past hours, I’ve found myself wanting to ask him some questions.

  To understand more.

  It was interesting to watch him in his element, directing his team. Shaking hands with me beside him like a guest, making introductions.

  They respect him. They seem to like him. That’s strange. I was sure he’d be a boardroom tyrant. I was sure he’d manage through insults, get results by way of derision. At least I’m an effective bastard, I imagined him saying.

  But it wasn’t like that. At all.

  And this place? This compound? The way the kids greeted us on arrival?

  Well. It’s not like I figured at all.

  “Can I wait?”

  “For Hampton?”

  “I just don’t know my way around a private jet. I’d feel funny without someone else showing me how to act.”

  Again, Andre smiles. “It’s simple. You sit, and the pilots take you home.”

  “It just seems like I’d feel weird, flying alone on someone else’s plane.”

  Andre looks at his watch. His head tips as if he’s making calculations. “I could fly with you. It’s not far, and I can just as easily work on the plane as here.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”

  “One of our designers, then. That actually might be good, if you’re going to be working with them?”

  He says it like a question, but I’m not sure if that’s because he’s making a proposal or if it’s because he knows that I’ll barely be “working with” Expendable Chic. Why Todd had to meet and approve me before I could make sketches in my shop, I have no idea. I’d be shocked if I ever saw these people again.

  “I wouldn’t want to inconvenience them, either.”

  “It’s no inconvenience.”

  Is he going to make me say it? I don’t want to admit I’d like another chance to talk to Hampton. I still detest the man. But now I’m curious, too. And yet, he’s a billionaire business mogul with his own agenda. Am I pushing for him to rush through meetings so he can fly as my security blanket?

  Andre must see my indecision. “Or you can wait a bit longer, and see what happens.”