Package Deal

by Jess Bentley

  Chris and Derek are both quiet for a moment, simmering in the now-impotent need to know how big my dick is compared to theirs and frustrated at not knowing. George casts a disapproving look my way, but I ignore it. The twins crave his approval like heroin. Not me.

  By and by, dinner begins to be obviously finished. We’ve moved on from eating and talking about our own lives to comparing them to everyone else’s lives — the natural next step. Mama still hasn’t said more than a dozen words since I got here, and she’s getting more and more agitated. Soon after this, I know, she’ll end up having another panic attack.

  I want to slap the twins for ignoring her in favor of George. My mother is proud of her boys, and she says it when she gets the chance. They couldn’t care less, though. Mama’s always been free with her praise and approval. George, on the other hand, always made us work for it, gave it rarely, and never without reminding us that he could withdraw it at any moment. Supply and demand. The first lesson he ever taught us.

  When I’m finally full up with hearing about how someone at work was promoted over George — he didn’t deserve it, of course — and Chris’s purchase of a new hybrid that gets better gas mileage than Derek’s — and at a steal after he haggled down the salesman, no less — I stand, and gather my mother’s dishes along with my own.

  She stands up with me, eager to be away from the table, too.

  “I’ll handle the dishes, Mama,” I tell her when she reaches for the plates I’ve gathered. “Take a load off. It’s the least I can do.”

  George eyes my mother as she leaves the room, and flashes me a nasty look before he turns his attention back on my brothers. Good. Maybe they’ll jerk each other off all night.

  The task of washing dishes gives me some tangible work to focus on, even if it does lull me into a dangerous reverie where that smug bastard is still, somehow, waiting for me with those stupid smoldering eyes and that idiot’s grin. Why he’s still lodged in my brain is a mystery I don’t plan on solving.

  I’m content, though, to do this work and then leave. George apparently has other plans. His heavy gait announces him like war drums. The counter creaks when he leans on it.

  “Can’t even socialize with your own brothers?” he asks.

  “Is that what they were doing?” I wonder out loud. “I thought it was a dick-measuring contest.”

  “You didn’t have to come, you know.” From his tone, he could have been telling me I didn’t have to be born.

  “Yes, I did,” I mutter, and put the next to last plate in the rack to dry.

  “I’m not the one who invited you,” George growls. “You don’t have to be pissed at me about being here. For once, you could just show a little respect.”

  It’s a bad time to say those words. I feel an itch in my hand, and nearly drop the plate instead of throwing it at him like I want to.

  “You just make your mother worse, showing up like you do,” George goes on, oblivious to the imminent threat of concussion. “Just like your father.”

  It stings. I know how to keep from showing it, but that doesn’t keep me from feeling it.

  He’s wrong, though. My father made my mother’s craziness worse by leaving — not by coming around. Not that he caused it. He could only take so much of it, I guess, because eventually he got fed up and left her to go play out his midlife crisis with a rich Somalian supermodel.

  At least, that’s the story I was told. Lately, I’ve been gradually getting back in touch with my father — not much, just a few Facebook messages and one or two short calls that amounted to small talk. I had tried to get Chris and Derek to join me in that, but they both refused. I suppose I can’t blame them, but… there are times when I feel isolated from the rest of the family for it.

  What I can tell of my father so far? He’s a better man than George. Of course, that isn’t saying much.

  “If I’m more like my father,” I tell him, “than I am you, then I’m proud of it, George.”

  He snorts at me and when I turn I get the rare chance to sneer at him. “Jesus, you're pathetic.”

  He trembles with anger as I pass him by to get to the dining room, and from there drop in to say goodnight to my mother. Chris and Derek both stay seated, and give barely interested waves when I announce that I’m leaving.

  I swear, one day I have got to stop getting mired in this bullshit.

  Jake

  Reginald’s plan, after I failed to snag Janie Hall, was worse than the one before. Leaning on the corner of Ferry Lights just an hour after getting the text that it all went off without a hitch, I watch as Janie comes tearing up to Red Hall’s curb and doesn’t even bother to hand the keys to the valet. Instead, she dashes inside.

  There, I know, she’ll find the damage. A busted water main. It’ll put her place out of commission for up to a week depending on who she can find to fix it, and unfortunately my father already ensured that it wouldn’t be anyone local.

  Reginald’s text was triumphant and banal. It took no effort to get one of his thugs in there, of course. It is a restaurant. His man simply made reservations.

  My father has no real reason to harass Janie this way. Ferry Lights is doing fine, and so is Red Hall. It’s ridiculous to prey on a woman like Janie just on her own merits, though. She worked hard to get where she is and she did it with no significant investors, a single Facebook page, and a dream.

  And me? I don’t have much of a choice but to sit front and center to watch this train wreck happen. The fact is, Reginald gets what Reginald wants. So do I, normally, except where it conflicts with his interests. Right now, my father wants to crush an innocent woman’s dream — more so now than before she turned me down.

  It’s easy to tell when Reginald is getting impatient. He stops being subtle.

  Though, in truth, I can’t really blame her for turning me down. Most people have a price tag on them somewhere, and the fact of the matter is it’s usually not that high. That Janie doesn’t seem to have one is… intriguing? Refreshing?

  The door to Red Hall swings open, and I reach for a cigarette. Guilt gives me cravings. I light it, and puff it slowly as I watch her dialing one- handed while she presses a hand to her forehead, then shakes out her hair, and then plants the fist on her hip. Here it comes.

  She talks to someone, frantic and animated, and then hangs up. She flicks the screen one, twice, looking for another plumber nearby. Another call, another cry for help. I can’t hear her from where I am, but I know what the conversation is that’s taking place each time she calls another plumber. She needs someone asapASAP. There’s no slot available until next week. That’s not soon enough. Nothing the plumber can do about that, mMa’am. Maybe call this other place…

  And on and on, until she runs out of options and realizes she’s going to have to shell out big bucks to get someone in from out of town — maybe out of state.

  Every time she hangs up, she looks more and more distraught. She’s heaving breaths, and pacing in front of the place. It would be better for her to do this inside, but she probably needs the air.

  Funny;, it reminds me of my mother, when she gave her grand speech the day she finally divorced Reginald. She looked like that — crushed, frantic,; furious as she screamed at him, and at the small entourage of enablers he kept at his beck and call — his “‘cronies”’ she called them all. I was in that room when it happened.

  Maybe that was the way it was supposed to be, too. I certainly feel like that right now. Just an extension of the old man — a tool he created, and owns, and has the right to wield however he sees fit. It’s the game I have to play, right? To get the prize. How much of me will be left at this rate, though, when he finally dies and leaves his fortune to me? Will I still be me when that happens?

  Disgusted, I drop my cigarette on the sidewalk and stomp it out. The bitter, burnt taste lingers in my mouth like a punishment. Just what I deserve — for everything to taste like ash.

  It finally happens. Janie stares at her phone. That�
��s the look of someone who is out of options and knows it. She turns, stares at Red Hall the way a person is supposed to stare at the corpse of a loved one, with the numb realization that this is the end.

  Come on, lady. Fight it. Don’t let Reginald stomp you into the ground. You’re bigger than that, right?

  She puts one hand on her stomach, probably to keep from vomiting, and closes her eyes. She’s thinking, working it all out, doing what she did when she got all this started. At that moment she’s even more beautiful than she already was and I wonder... what’s she going to do?

  Janie opens her eyes, new light flashing from them as she scrolls through her phone again. She dials someone, presses the phone to her ear and waits.

  At that moment, she looks across the street. She sees me.

  If she could have spit acid, I wouldn’t have a face. Whoever’s on the other end of the line answers, and she turns away from me, charging back into her lounge, into her fort. Before she closes the door behind her again she glances my way and I can tell: that’s a lady who’s ready for war.

  I smile, and tuck my cigarette case into my jacket pocket.

  Thatta girl.

  Janie

  My blood is boiling as I stand behind the glass door of Red Hall and watch people file in to Ferry Lights. The deeper my heart sinks, the hotter it gets until I’m trembling with it and I want to march across the street like a crazy person and start howling and throwing things.

  I don’t, of course. I’m not actually a crazy person.

  None of the staff can afford a day off, so, I’m making the best of a bad situation. Spring cleaning it is. All the nooks and crannies that never get the attention they need. With the water shut down, the flooding in the kitchen has stopped. No one saw anything, of course. That would be too easy. I’m certain someone in my kitchen has been paid off, but what can I do? Fire them all?

  It will take three days for a plumber to come in. Luckily, I know a plumber, though he’s about two hours away. Imagine that. My pipe busts at the precise moment that every single plumber in town is mysteriously busy for the next week.

  The two events are linked in my mind, and even if they had nothing to do with one another, I can’t separate them now. Worse, I keep thinking about Jake Ferry showing up at my lounge when his father’s place is right across the street, and the fact that I turned him down. And right when this crisis comes down, who do I see peeking at me, smoking a cigarette like a smug bastard?

  Jake. Fucking. Ferry.

  Once, when I was about thirteen, I was experimenting with a recipe. I had read about using lemon and orange zest, but all I had in the house were grapefruits, so I used grapefruit zest. At first, it actually tasted pretty good. So good that I added a little more, and then a little more. A whole bag of zested grapefruits, in fact.

  I cooked the dish, and poured the sauce over it, and was surprised when it actually tasted really good. So good I had two helpings.

  Then, I got sick.

  Weeks later, I went to cut a grapefruit in half. I got a whiff of the skin and like some Pavlovian reflex my stomach turned over and I was sick again. I haven’t touched a grapefruit since.

  If Jake Ferry was under my skin before, well… now, he’s a grapefruit. Problem solved. Right?

  He walks out of Ferry Lights as I watch the doors, stumbling down the broad stairs to the curb where he chucks the new valet on the shoulder and laughs. I should be sick to my stomach. Instead I’m watching his easy humor and the way he actually talks with the kid instead of just treating him like shrubbery like most of the guests do. How can a man like that do a thing like this?

  Well, he probably didn’t do it himself. Must have been one of the Ferry thugs, but surely Jake knew about it. Had it happened that night he visited? When I was distracted?

  What was it about Jake that had me so attracted to him? I’m not a shallow girl. Well — I’m just as switched on by a hot guy as any other girl with eyes, but I’m not in short supply for suitors and wannabe boytoys. So why Jake?

  The valet leaves to get his car, and returns in a low, sleek yellow Jaguar that I can hear idling even from behind closed doors. Ridiculous. Jake passes the kid a tip, and then peels out.

  Look at the kid, staring after Jake Ferry like he’s just met his hero.

  What the hell is wrong with me?

  I glance over my shoulder, at the staff inside busy vacuuming and dusting and scrubbing tables and chairs. No one’s looking at me just now, so I take the moment while I have it.

  Through the doors, down the sidewalk and then around the side of the building to a little nook in the wall that’s hidden by tall bushes. There’s a pile of cigarette butts in one corner. Guess I’m not the only one who knows about this little spot. I’ll have to talk to someone about that, maybe put an ashtray here.

  It’s out of the way, and that’s all I need right now.

  I get as far as letting my eyes burn with almost-tears. My throat tightens and aches, and I can feel so much more underneath — but this is as far as it gets. Leaning against my building, I hang suspended in the near release of what I know would be a cathartic crying session if I could only get it started. It’s supposed to be therapeutic, they say.

  My rational mind steps in, though, and short-circuits my emotional one like it always does. I’m overreacting. I’m above this. Janie Hall doesn’t cry; she gets to work.

  The pipe will get fixed, and I’ll be back in business. Already texts and emails are coming in with messages of support, my higher-profile clientele all talking about having a back-in-business soirée. Hell, maybe it would be a good night to roll out the hot sauce samples and make it a big event.

  And that thought is the one that sends me back up, out of the depression and the doubt for a little bit. That’s what I’ll do. Get the place open, announce the event when I do… it might take a little longer to get the samples produced, but I can spin the back-in-business event to market the big reveal, and maybe even roll out some of the chef’s new dishes in advance. It would take a few extra catering staff. Maybe Chester could come up with some shots or cocktails using the milder hot sauces.

  Then again, that assumes I’ll make it that far. I want to be confident; I want to believe that I can do this no matter what I have to overcome. I’ve already gotten so far and believe me, I had a hell of a lot of hurdles to leap and hoops to dive through.

  But none of those hurdles was ever a petty billionaire with a vicious streak and a bone to pick with me.

  Jake

  As if busting a pipe in the kitchen wasn’t enough, Reginald smirks at me as he reveals the two in the one-two punch he plans to deliver against Janie Hall and her establishment.

  “Nothing hurts public image worse for a woman like Miss Hall than finding out she slept her way to the top,” he says, laughing like he’s made some kind of joke.

  My stomach clenches briefly. Janie Hall? I never would have guessed it. “Where are you getting this information? Are you connected to one of her investors?”

  My father looks at me like I’m too stupid to live. “What investors? No, Jake... Christ, you never pay attention, do you? Nobody cares if she actually slept with anyone; they care about the story. The suggestion that she might have. She’s a woman! Once word gets out, it’ll catch fire.”

  “You’re just going to put out a story saying she slept with an investor?” I ask, incredulous. It’s not exactly a new low — Reginald has done this kind of thing before — but it seems like overkill. He could just wait to see how she handles the lost business.

  But it isn’t enough for him to destroy Red Hall. No. He wants to destroy the woman behind it, wants to make sure she doesn’t just move shop and open up another joint in a year when she’s recovered from the loss of her current business.

  “A silent investor,” he says. “No one specific, of course. Unless I can find out if she did. She doesn’t strike me as the type, though.” He pops a grape into his mouth, thoughtful for a moment.

  �
��Better, we’ll say the silent investor was married,” he says after a while, nodding slowly to himself. “Nothing worse than a slut who can’t get her own man and has to take someone else’s, am I right?”

  I refrain from pointing out that this demographic encompasses literally all of my father’s ex-wives and extramarital “friends.” It would be lost on him anyway.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I tell him, standing from the uncomfortable chair. “Let me know how it goes.”

  He laughs. “Just look for the ‘closed for business’ sign on the front of that shitty excuse for a lounge she threw together.”

  My laugh is forced, but my father doesn’t notice. When you don’t have to care what anyone thinks, you don’t have to be aware of whether they’re being sincere or not. Reginald doesn’t rely on things like that. He relies on leverage.

  What I plan on the walk to the garage is probably the sort of thing that would get me cut out of the will, my credit cards canceled, and my trust fund pulled. But there’s something inside me that can’t, or won’t, just let him ruin Janie like that. Undercutting her business with whatever seedy underworld tactics he typically uses is one thing. Previous competitors Reginald has crushed were able to leave town, set up shop somewhere else. In the case of one tech startup, they left the country.

  This was different. This wasn’t just cruel, it was criminal. Although that word means something different to people like Reginald. And, I suppose, to me.

  Once out of the house and on the road, I pull over and make a call. My heart pounds in my chest just dialing the number, much less handing down the edict. Social media management is the main function I serve for my father’s many businesses, so my network of bloggers and amateur journalists is wider than his, though Reginald’s network extends to places like the Washington Post and the New York Times.

  When it’s time to smear a presidential candidate or a congressperson who isn’t voting his way, Reginald has me beat. No doubt about that. When it comes to the hottest bloggers, people with millions of readers, on the other hand... that’s the arena where I win, and it’s the arena where this feud is going to play out.