by Mia Caldwell
“The boy’s a barman,” said Davis, who still seemed to regard tending bar as some sort of sacred calling, akin to the priesthood. “He’s used to late nights and late mornings.”
Nick had been about to confirm this and use it as an excuse for his dragging his sorry body out of bed so late, but decided on the spur of the moment that the truth was the better option. “No,” he said ruefully. “Just too much home brew.”
He had been prepared to lose the respect of Zoe’s father but instead Davis threw back his head and laughed. “I guess you don’t get many drinks like that in your bar.”
“I’d have more customers if I did,” said Nick. “At first, anyway. And then suddenly less.”
“Then you’d get shut down by the Department of Health,” said Zoe’s brother, Byron. “That’s what happened when the bar where I used to work started serving cousin Tee’s home brew.”
“They tried to argue that they were using it to clean the toilets,” said Davis, shaking his head. “But the bureaucrats wouldn’t buy it. Even though it does make the bowl sparkle.”
Nick grinned. “Well it’s not making me sparkle, but it was great at the time.”
“You did drink a lot of it,” Zoe commented. “Do you remember much about last night?”
There was something about the way she had asked the question that caught Nick’s ear. Had something happened last night? She seemed too cheery for him to have said something stupid or offended her. Was it possible that they had… No. He would have remembered that.
He would definitely have remembered that.
He had, after all, been contemplating what her ass and breasts would feel like for way too long. There was no way he would forget it if he’d actually been able to put his hands all over her.
“Not as much as I would like,” he finally answered.
“Maybe that’s just as well.” She was smiling as she said it, but once again, Nick detected that certain something in her voice that suggested that maybe there was more that was remaining unsaid. He wracked his brain to try to think of what had happened last night, but found that brain-wracking in his current state was not a good idea.
“I hope I didn’t do anything dumb.”
“The dumbest thing anyone does when drunk on Tee’s home brew,” said Zoe’s sister, Karina, “is to keep drinking it.”
“Not the quite the dumbest thing,” said Davis, shooting a sideling glance at his son.
Byron rolled his eyes. “You go on one naked tractor ride and no one will ever let it go!”
Family breakfasts had ben rare in the Rothberger house when Nick was growing up. It was not that they had not been a loving family (they had been and still were), but there was always something else to do, always so much more going on. The Rothberger household had not just been about business, it had been about busy-ness. And when you put the two together they did not make for relaxed family meals.
That said, Nick had a hunch that, even had the family not been too busy, their breakfasts would still not have been like this. It was not just the plentiful food – grits, cornbread, cobbler and other stuff Nick had heard about only via rumor and the dire warnings of his cardiologist and personal trainer– it was not just the chatter, which was as plentiful as the food. It was an atmosphere of good cheer that hung in the air. There were no edges to the Blanchards; they simply were who they were, take them as you find them. It was all so… easy.
Nick wondered how much Zoe must miss this comfortable life, and how much she had been forced to change since moving to the big city. And now he was forcing her to change still more. Worse than that, he was suggesting that she needed to change, that she was better for it. That she wasn’t fine the way she was.
He was actively implying that the world she came from—the world of this welcoming breakfast, which he was enjoying so much -- was in some way less than the world in which he had been brought up.
He felt a little ashamed.
Not that there was anything wrong with the way he had been brought up or the life he led, but the idea that one was superior to the other was clearly nonsense, as he was coming to see. A person could be happy in either, or in both if they chose. Forcing Zoe to fit into the constricting mold of Vanessa Reese was like trying to put and elephant in a hamster cage. While trying to change her into Sabrina was selfish and… to be honest, it was wasteful; she was amazing the way she was.
He hadn’t really noticed before, but Zoe was a pretty great at being Zoe, and right now that seemed to Nick like the best possible thing that she could be. When they got back home, there would be some changes in how he went about teaching her. No longer would he be trying to change her for good, trying to convince her that his way of being was better than her way of being -- he would just show her how to fake it for a week. Then he could win his bet in good conscience.
The bet…
He was suddenly reminded of how much he wasn’t telling her. That he was, in fact, lying to her.
Should he be guilty over that too? No. It was just a bet. It wasn’t hurting Zoe or anyone else. It was fine. He returned to eating, forcing the pricking needles of conscience to the back his mind, where could safely ignore them.
“Have you kids got plans for the rest of the day?” Olive still believed Zoe and Nick to be a couple – or at least, she was trying to speed the process along (she had even tried to put them in the same room).
“Why don’t you show Nick round town?” suggested Davis.
Zoe’s wide brown eyes turned to Nick in question.
Nick nodded. “Sure. Why not.”
“Perfect!” Olive clapped her hands together and gave the two of them a beaming smile.
“Do you mind if I ask you something?” said Nick, as he and Zoe strolled down Main Street (pretty much ‘only street’) in the nearby town.
“Go ahead.”
“How do you grow up out here and not learn to ride a horse?”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “I can’t lasso a cow either. Hasn’t a visit here been enough to get some of those stupid preconceptions out of your head?”
“Apparently not.”
“After all, you grew up in the city but you do know how to ride a horse.”
Nick shrugged. “I had lessons. I had lessons in everything. I can still read basic Latin, I can row, play tennis, and dance the waltz. It’s like being prepared for the world’s most random game show.”
“That’s exactly what you’re preparing me for in a way,” said Zoe. “Who knows what might come up in the final exam.”
“Latin seems unlikely.”
“Good. Cause I’m not learning that.”
Nick looked about him. “This is a nice town. I can’t imagine why you’d ever want to leave.”
As they strolled down the street Nick saw people throwing them curious glances. Zoe waved to people she knew as they walked. The hominess of small town life was starting to grow on him.
“That’s because you don’t live here.”
“It’s not a good place to live?”
Zoe shook her head. “Oh no, it’s a great place to live. That’s half the problem. It’s such a great place to live that you never want to leave. And, assuming you want to do something interesting with your life - something different to what your Dad and your Grandad and his Grandad did – you gotta leave. And the longer you stay the harder it gets.” She shrugged. “I think I’ve found a pretty good balance. I visit often to see my folks and that works. Keeps me grounded. It’s a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live her. It’s just too easy.”
‘Easy’ was a word that troubled Nick a lot in relation to his own life, although in a very different way. His whole life had been easy, his path through it greased by money and position. And that was great, not something you would ever want to complain about. But if everything is easy then you never get any real sense of accomplishment. Which, again, was a tough thing to bitch about – if the worst thing about your life was that you never got a sense of accomplishment t
hen you were generally considered pretty lucky and to be envied. But still, the void remained. If everything you had ‘achieved’ in life had been achieved solely through money then life was hollow. And if what you had achieved was a failing bar then the problem was suddenly worse. Nick was aware that he had bought his only achievement, and somehow he had still managed to fail!
They moved on through the town. Zoe pointed out her school, the place where she had got her first job, and the bar where she had sneaked in with a fake ID to try and get her first drink.
“Didn’t work,” she reported with a sigh.
“How come?”
“Look at this place,” Zoe indicated the town in general. “Everyone knows everyone. I came in the door, ready to introduce myself as Claudia Washington and order a beer, and Gus behind the bar says, ‘Hey Zoe, how’s your Pa?’.”
“You didn’t think of that before getting the ID?”
“Well you don’t, do you?” said Zoe, shaking her head at the stupidity of youth. “Damn ID cost me a fifty dollars.”
“That’d be a bargain in the city.”
“It may not have been that high quality,” admitted Zoe. “I think it was printed on cardboard.”
“My first fake ID cost five hundred dollars.”
“They saw you coming.”
“At least it worked,” Nick continued. “I bought a bottle of peppermint schnapps.”
“I bet that got you in with the cool kids.”
“Not like I’d hoped,” recalled Nick. “I thought it would be better the beer. It sounded fancy and it cost more than beer but it turned out that everyone preferred beer. I ended up getting drunk on my own and watching Road Runner cartoons. And then throwing up. Even today, when I hear ‘Meep, Meep!” I taste minty vomit in my mouth.”
“I’m glad you felt you could share that disgusting memory,” said Zoe wrinkling her nose.
“When did you first manage to get drunk?” asked Nick.
“I worked in the local liquor store,” Zoe pointed across the street. “Just to earn a bit of extra cash in the holidays while I was at business school. Everyone else in my family – well, you’ve already seen – worked in bars and I was determined that wouldn’t be me. So I went with liquor store. Big difference, right?”
“Enormous,” nodded Nick. “What’s wrong with bar work?”
“Nothing,” said Zoe, hastily. “I guess you just don’t want to be what your parents want you to be, or what everyone else in your family already is.” She smiled. “Funny really – I went to business school to get out of bar work, you went into bar work to get out of business. Both rebelling against our parents.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say I went into bar work,” said Nick. “I own a bar and I run a bar. I just work behind it every now and then to help out.”
He noticed that Zoe got a funny look on her face when he said this.
“You don’t enjoy it?” she queried.
“Well… Yeah. I guess. It’s fine. But running it is the real… you know – that’s what I do.”
“Sure.” Zoe nodded, that strange look still on her face. “Any of last night coming back to you yet?”
“Not really. Why?”
“No reason.”
“Did we talk about bar work?”
“We touched on it,” shrugged Zoe.
“Did liquor store work suit you?”
“Up to a point. I didn’t really take to the whole ‘customer service’ thing. Or the liquor store particularly. But I was good at running things when my boss was away. I reorganized the store room so it was more efficient and he could better keep track of inventory, and I showed him a better way of doing his accounts.” There was, Nick noticed, a quiet pride in her voice as she spoke. “I really enjoyed it. And - that stuff… I guess it let me know that I was right to go to business school – that I wasn’t wasting my time and I had actual natural aptitude for that side of things. What was your first job?”
“CEO of RothCo,” Nick sighed.
“I guess everyone’s got to start somewhere.” Zoe shook her head and rolled her eyes. “You weren’t kidding when you said you had it easy.”
“No.” Nick admitted. He shrugged. “I guess had it handed to me on a platter. I reckon my monthly salary could by that whole liquor store.”
“I doubt Mr. Bailey would sell.”
“You know,” Nick continued – it was strange how easy and natural it felt for him to speak about these things to Zoe; he was sure he hadn’t felt this way yesterday, “I’d really like to be able to say that that was my problem. I was promoted beyond my experience. If I had come up through the ranks like a CEO should then I’d have been better prepared and better at the job. No one being given a command role, just like that, out of nowhere, with nothing to back it up, would be able to do a good job. But Adam got the same job at the same time and he’s done a great job. A fantastic job. He’s grown the company enormously. He took to it like a fish to water. I took to it like a fish in a deep fat fryer.”
“I guess different people have different strengths,” said Zoe. “There are probably aspects of bar work that better suit you.”
“Yes, yes of course,” lied Nick. He did not want to tell her that he in fact sucked as a bar owner. It was only behind the bar that he showed any aptitude at all and what did that matter? Anyone could do that. He found himself experiencing the strangest sensation of déjà vu, and again saw that odd look on Zoe’s face. “To each their own.”
They came to the end of Main Street and looked out beyond it to the very appealing wilderness beyond.
“Looks like you could walk across it forever,” said Nick.
“People have tried.”
“Yeah?”
“Seldom goes well.”
They turned and began to walk back along the opposite side of the street, giving Nick a slightly different perspective for the return journey.
“I’ve been thinking about your bar,” Zoe began tentatively.
“Oh yeah?” Nick had been thinking about it too. It was a subject that seldom left his mind these days, festering at the back of it. How long could he prop the place up with his own money and still call it a business? It was little more than an expensive hobby, and an advert for what a total failure he was in every endeavor. All of which meant that it was not a topic that he especially wanted to discuss with Zoe.
“I had a couple of ideas,” Zoe went on.
“Gleaned from your time as a liquor store assistant?”
Zoe shot him a hard look. “Your bar is failing.”
Nick tried not to look shocked. “Nonsense! What would make you think that?” How had she known? “The bar’s doing fine.”
“I do know a little about business,” Zoe said. “And I have a familial bar connection. Bottom line: if anyone is qualified to recognize when a bar is struggling, then it’s me.”
“Nonsense!”
“On the bright side, if anyone is qualified to help it, then that’s also me.” She saw his skeptical look. “If you’ll let me,” she added.
Despite his keenly protected fiction that the bar was doing fine and was not losing money hand over fist, Nick listened as Zoe talked and, after a few minutes, began to listen.
She used words he did not immediately recognize, she rattled off numbers like a calculator with number diarrhea, she spoke in concepts and terms that seemed initially more theoretical than practical, but in the end it all boiled down to one simple thing: I can turn your business around if you will let me.
“It’s all there,” Zoe concluded. “The business is in a good location, it’s got a nice ambience and friendly feel. Everything is right except the business side. Your suppliers are wrong, your marketing is non-existent, you’re carrying brands only fancy people have ever heard of, your promotions suck, your staff rotation is counter-intuitive, I haven’t seen your accounts but I’m guessing they’re not properly managed and you’re getting hosed by your suppliers. All these things seem like nothing when you know
you’re providing a good product, but trust me; they make a difference.”
Nick nodded dumbly, then asked the question that had been bothering him for the last fifteen minutes. “Why are you doing this?”
From the look on Zoe’s face, it was a question that she had not asked herself yet. “I… she fumbled. “I guess… It seemed like you needed it.”
She looked away, unwilling to meet his gaze. Was she uncomfortable? There was a stumble in her walk – more than usual. And Nick found that he had started blushing. What on earth was that about? What was he embarrassed of? He was at his most comfortable around the opposite sex – what was different about now? What was different about Zoe? He could not say – or did not wish to – but something was different about her.
“You’re really…” he struggled to find something to say, some way of thanking her that articulated the emotions he was trying to suppress. “You’re really something.” He finished lamely.
Zoe seemed even more flustered as she wrapped her arms around herself. “Thanks. You’re something too.”
Late that afternoon they would fly back to the city and the following morning, first thing, Nick would resume Zoe’s lessons. But it all seemed oddly futile now. What could he teach her?
Only stuff that she didn’t really need to know.
The lessons ought to be the other way around – she could teach him about good business practice for sure, but also about family, about how to live and to follow your dreams without any caveat. Without making am almighty mess of everything you touched. Nick being her teacher just seemed faintly ridiculous now.
But there was still the bet to consider.
For Nick to win that, Zoe had to pass herself off as Vanessa Reese and for that there were still things that she needed to learn, however useless those things might be in the big picture. Making Zoe more like Vanessa had previously struck Nick as difficult (if not downright impossible), now it struck him as an actively hateful and destructive process. Why would he want to change someone as wonderful as Zoe?
But it was just temporary, he reassured himself.