by Alexa Davis
As I’m thinking about it, I don’t know that I should ever have come back to New York, myself. My presence hasn’t fixed anything. Yeah, the stock price leveled out for a few days, but when word spread the new office was still on, it started dropping again regardless.
Of course, if it keeps going on like this too much longer, I’m going to be in some serious trouble. Financially, I’m plenty secure now, but most of my money is tied up in Stingray stock. Come to think of it, I should probably check to make sure I’m still a billionaire. You fall out of that particular club and people tend to remember it.
I stood up for my relationship with Ellie in a pretty monumental way, though. I can feel good about that.
The phone calls are going to start any minute. It’s only a matter of how long it takes Marly to cross the lobby and get outside.
It’s not an irrecoverable situation. If anything, it may help public perception. It’s not going to do anything for investors’ failing confidence, and it may just be the end of my reign as CEO, but with enough positive public attention, I’ll at least have some leverage.
That is, assuming America’s still got a bit of the romantic in her.
The situation with Ellie is precarious. I haven’t even told her I was that goofy kid from the last three weeks of junior high. When she hears everything, I don’t know how she’s going to take it.
I should have just told her, but through all the planning, all the years of planning every angle, I never accounted for just how hard it would be. Who I was then and now was going to be a shock if it was the first thing I told her about, but a lot of time has passed since I had that chance.
Right now, I’m that guy on television with all the fancy crap. That guy has power. The other guy, the spindly jackass who’d blush every time a cute girl went past, that guy has nothing. That guy was nothing.
It’s early, and I know she’s sleeping, but the first rule of damage control is to break the story first. That way you do it on your terms.
I call Ellie.
“If this isn’t God, I’m hanging up,” she groans.
It’s a good thing my ego’s not that far out of check. “It’s not God, but I’d still like to talk to you,” I say, trying to keep my tone as light as possible.
“Oh hey, Nick,” she says through a yawn. “I’d be glad you called if it weren’t the dead crack of night.”
“I’m sorry about that,” I tell her. “Listen, there’s something I need to talk to you about. It’s not how I wanted to do it, but circumstances have left me no choice.”
“Actually,” she says, “I’ve been doing some thinking.”
“Yeah?” I ask. “About what?”
“I don’t know. I feel like we jumped into this whole thing so fast, and I guess I just got caught up in the thrill of who you are and seeing the world you live in,” she says.
No.
I start again, saying, “Ellie, I know things have been moving fast, but—”
“Please,” she says. “I’ve already started, and I’d like to say this before I wake up too much and can’t get through it.”
My heart is pounding. I plead, “Ellie, just listen—”
“I don’t think it’s going to work out,” she says. “If I misled you in any way, I’m sorry. I honestly wanted to give us a shot, but I don’t think your status or your lifestyle is a healthy foundation for a relationship.”
“Ellie—”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I have to go.”
She hangs up before I can even start the sentence, “We weren’t strangers when we met.” I could have slipped it in there. She cut off nearly everything I said, but she would have heard that.
Maybe I didn’t want to tell her. Regardless, she’s going to find out, and my calls are going straight to voicemail.
It was going to be bad enough if I’d had a chance to tell her everything. Now, when she finds out, I won’t be able to fill in the gaps. If there’s any chance of a relationship in the future, it’s if I can get ahold of her before the news breaks. But there’s nothing I can do.
Naomi’s phone is off, too.
Malcolm sticks his head into the office to inform me that CNBC already has an exclusive locked down with Marly. She’s not just outing me to the board so they can leak it.
I misjudged Marly, and it looks like that mistake is about to cost me everything not telling Ellie hasn’t already. There’s nothing left but that final half step off the cliff.
The story writes itself: rags-to-riches billionaire loses everything, the story at eleven.
Cut to commercial.
Chapter Thirteen
Stock
Ellie
Nick called almost twelve hours ago, but I haven’t slept. I’m locked in my room, questioning my decision when Naomi tells me there’s someone at the door.
I drag myself out of bed, clothed in the oversized shirt that is my sleeping attire, to find Helen, my former boss’s widow, waiting for me.
“Hey,” I say. “I’m so sorry, when Naomi said we had company, I just figured it was someone else here to blame me for something over which I never had any control. Won’t you come in?”
“You sound busy,” Helen says. She’s always timid. How she and Troy ever got along is beyond me.
“I’m not,” I tell her. “I’d be happy for the company. Please, come in.”
Helen and I have never really had that many opportunities to talk, but she’s always decent to me. Nervously, she comes into the apartment.
“I really can’t stay,” she says, “but I wanted to make sure you got this.”
She reaches into her jacket pocket and pulls out an envelope. “That night when Troy came home,” she starts, “he told me how the two of you had sold everything in the store. He wouldn’t stop going on about it until I got in the car with him and he showed me himself. You should have heard how he was going on about how every time things would start to slow down he’d cause a bit of excitement over this piece or that, and we both knew him well enough to see right through that.”
“It’s all right,” I tell her. “I don’t mind if he took credit for that. I didn’t have all that much to do with it as it is.”
“Whatever the case,” Helen says, “I knew you were never going to see your share of the profits unless I set it aside. You have to understand. Troy never meant to take money from others. It’s just when money fell into his lap, he didn’t know what else to do but gamble it and try to turn it into something more. That’s what he always used to say: turn it into something more. He wasn’t an evil man.”
“I never thought he was,” I say. It’s not quite the truth, but it’s close enough.
“Anyway,” she says, “here.”
She hands me the envelope. It’s thick with money.
“Also, the keys to the shop and Troy’s old office are in there, too,” she says. “I don’t know if you want to try reinvesting that money or not, but the option’s open if you want it.”
“Helen, you don’t have to do this,” I tell her. “You should keep it.”
“Don’t do that,” she says sharply, catching me off guard. “My husband’s dead. I get enough in the way of pity. Besides,” she whispers, leaning in closer, “before Troy left for Tahiti, I squirreled away a little for a rainy day, too.” She winks at me.
“Thanks,” I tell her. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I’m just delivering money that’s rightfully yours,” she says. “If I may leave you with a piece of advice before I go?”
“Sure,” I answer.
“Don’t make bets you can’t cover,” she says. “Eventually, you’re going to upset the wrong person, and that person might just make a phone call to one of the guys you introduced her to the last time you went to Tahiti.”
Without another word, Helen turns and leaves the apartment.
I’m not sure, but I think she just confessed to being involved in Troy’s—but that’s impossible.
Helen came into the
store once, and she saw a spider. I offered to squash it for her, but she picked it up with her bare hands and took it outside, saying she never liked to see any living thing come to harm, no matter how distasteful we may think them to be.
It was doubly impressive because the spider was a black widow. I remember, because I’m the one that took her to the hospital after she found a safe place to deposit the spider that bit her.
Nah, Helen would never do anything like that.
Now, with something to do, I tell Naomi I’m going to be out a little while and leave before she can give me yet another list of places to pick up horny guys. I’m nowhere near ready to tell her she can stop the smear campaign. That’s a going to be a whole different kind of a headache.
I get to the store to find the window hasn’t been replaced yet. It doesn’t look like anyone’s tried to cause further damage to the store, but something needs to happen with the window today.
Before I do that, I’m going to want to get this place cleaned up a little. I hadn’t planned on coming back here. Once the window gets replaced, the plan was just to sell the building, give half the money to Helen whether she liked it or not, and call that the end of it.
The unfortunate reality is that I don’t have anything else to do. There are no jobs here in town, and I’m not about to move. No matter how many people leave me threatening notes or call my house and hang up, this is my home, and I’m not going.
First, though, I head back to Troy’s office and unlock the door. He was always on that computer, but he would switch the screen before I could see what he was doing on it. I know it’s immature, but I’m curious.
The surprise ends up not being that much of a surprise. Everything on Troy’s computer is poker and blackjack. His browser history is made up of lists of places to find real-money games on the dark net. I know enough about the dark net never to go there.
I’m disappointed it’s not something more surprising, but also a little relieved the boss wasn’t just in there streaming hours of porn. That would have been awkward.
I call the glass repair shop and ask if they know how long it’ll be before they can get around to Rory’s, but as soon as the woman on the phone realizes it’s me she’s talking to, she loses the saccharin customer-service voice.
“We’ll get around to it when we get around to it,” I believe are her exact words before hanging up on me.
It’ll take some time, but eventually, I’m sure I can convince all these people I’m not the reason Nick didn’t hire any of them before he left town. Exactly what they thought I could do about it eludes me.
I guess people need a scapegoat when it turns out that big break isn’t coming. Who better than me for that job?
Troy never took me when he went out for a buy, so the only experience I have with acquiring new pieces is people bringing their stuff into the shop. I was hoping the glass was already installed, or at least that I could get someone out here today to take care of it, but until that happens, there’s not much I can do.
As I sit here on what still feels like the wrong side of Troy’s desk, I can’t stop thinking about how quickly this town that I’ve lived in my entire life, these people I’ve known forever could just turn on me so fast. I didn’t have to do anything but catch the eye of a powerful man: that was enough for everyone to decide they hate me.
It’s not fair, but stating that fact has never changed anything for anyone.
Still, as I sit here, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to keep my teeth unclenched, my fists unclenched.
I’ve done nothing to these people, yet when their golden goose turns out to just be a guy with a company and no personal investment in any of their lives, they go after me? I wonder if Troy was still alive when they broke the window or if they desecrated this place after word of his death spread.
Neither possibility seems human, much less reasonable.
I grab my phone and call the Mario’s Glass back, tapping my fingernails on the desk as the line rings.
“Mario’s Glass where every day is clear and bright,” the woman I talked to a few minutes ago answers.
“Yeah, this is Ellie over at Rory’s,” I say. “I’m going to need someone to come by today, or I’m going with someone else.”
The woman sighs loudly. “I know you like to think you’re too new here to be a part of this community, but we’re the only glass shop in town.”
“That’s fine,” I tell her. “I’ll just let Grant know that you’re not pulling your weight. Come to think about it, the call probably shouldn’t come from me. That’s all right, though. There are a few people in this town who still speak to me. I’m sure with enough complaints, Grant will have you reassigned in no time. Where’d the last person who wasn’t living up to their potential end up?” I ask. “I think it was sewer duty, wasn’t it? I know you like to think I’m too new here to be a part of this community, but I’ve lived here my whole life, and I know how this town runs, so maybe you just do your job and put the work order through.”
From an objective viewpoint, Nick is by far the most powerful individual I’ve ever met. In Mulholland, though, Grant is the one with all the cards, and he does not tolerate someone failing at a job in which he’s placed them.
Those who get on Grant’s bad side don’t easily find their way back off it again.
The woman groans. “I’ll have someone over there today, but that’s the only time you get to pull that card,” she says.
“Thanks for all your help,” I say in my brightest, cheeriest voice. “You’ve been great.”
I hang up the phone just in time to accidentally send Naomi’s incoming call to voicemail. When she calls back a few seconds later, the strangest thing happens, and I accidentally ignore that one, too.
There’s enough adrenaline in my veins I might just tell Naomi Max’s attack command and hope she repeats it loudly enough for him to hear it. The word is “creep,” but that’s neither here nor there.
Some guys come by after an hour or so to get the front window of the store replaced, but not one of them will look at me, even when speaking directly to me. I’d let my venom loose on them, but it’s a lot easier to threaten someone over the phone.
The first ten minutes they’re there, the only thing any of the workers says to me is, “Clean up all this glass before someone gets hurt, you idiot.”
Insult aside, before the men got here to replace the window, I tried the best I could to do just that. It’s hard when there’s so much glass over so much floor and all there is to clean with is an old push broom that’s missing so many bristles it’s just as likely to gouge the floor as move anything.
Still, I’ve had about all the conflict I’m in the mood for today, so I grab the broom anyway and flip it upside down to use the metal part of the brush strictly. It makes a terrible screeching noise going across the floor, but it’s moving the glass.
I’m most of the way done piling all the glass into one corner of the shop when one of the men working on the window, Alan, comes over and puts a hand on my shoulder.
“Let me do that for you,” he says. “I know you’ve had a rough time around town lately, and I just want you to know there are still those of us who care.”
“Yeah,” I scoff. “You guys already have the sheet of glass cut to size, but you’ve spent the last hour measuring. First, you measure the window; then you measure the glass. You measure the window. You measure the glass. You measure the window. You measure the glass. You measure the—”
“I get it,” he says. “I’m sorry about that. Let me make it up to you.”
Without waiting for a response, Alan snatches the broom from my hands and starts pushing the thing like there’s a prize for finishing early.
“Ellie?” an all-too-familiar voice comes from behind me.
I turn around with a snicker. “No wonder they got to work so fast,” I tell the man I broke up with a little more than half a day ago. “What are you doing here, Nick?”
“Listen, I know what it must look like, but I promise it’s not what you think,” he starts.
“Well, I think it you came all the way here from New York after I told you things weren’t going to work out between us. But hey, I’ve been wrong before,” I respond.
“I know that’s how you must feel now, but …” he trails off. “Wait, you haven’t heard?” he asks.
“Heard what?” I respond.
Meanwhile, Alan’s dropped the broom as the floor’s now clear of glass—though there are now long, metallic grooves like spider veins on the old, laminated floor. I watch as he tries to lift the huge piece of glass all by himself and I cover my ears as it slips from his fingers after two steps and shatters on the sidewalk.
“I’m not paying for that!” I shout through what should have been that window. “You should go,” I tell him. “I don’t know what you expected to find when you came here, but I’m pretty sure once you leave, that glass is coming out of the salary I don’t make anymore.”
“What happened to the old one?” Nick asks.
Shaking my head, I answer, “I’m not really in the mood for chit-chat, Nick. If you came here to say something, I suggest you spit it out already. Otherwise, I have to go back to being the piece of gum under everyone’s shoe.”
“What does that mean?” he asks.
I groan. “It means that thanks to you, everyone in town thinks I’ve slighted them out of some magical existence,” I tell him. “I don’t know how they got it into their stupid heads that I ever had anything to do with how you spent your money or who you hired, but now that thought’s in there, it doesn’t look like it’s going to fall back out anytime soon.”
He purses his lips. “I can talk to some people,” he says. “Maybe it’s not too late to turn them around.”
“They’ll get over it,” she says. “Sooner or later, they’re going to find something else to be mad about, and they’ll find another stooge to blame for it. You should have called,” I tell him. “I could have saved you the trip.”
“Whether it’s out yet or not,” he tells me, “there’s something I should have said a long time ago—”