The Cul-de-Sac War

by Melissa Ferguson

  He blinked, and his smile lingered on her eyes, her lips. “You too.”

  Chapter 23

  Chip

  He hadn’t wanted to get in his truck and drive to the Barter.

  Not with the way she had stood there on the other side of the line, her hair in that thick, high bun, her cheeks highlighted by the rising sun. Her eyes had been like flashing emeralds, beckoning him closer even as he said he had to go.

  He didn’t want to go.

  He wanted to drop his bag right then and stride over and—

  “Mr. McBride. You’re just in time.”

  Mr. Richardson held open the Barter door as though he were an usher for an evening play. “I was just about to close the doors.”

  Chip blinked away images of green sweaters and dancing eyes.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said, ducking inside.

  Chip felt the slap on his back as Mr. Richardson spoke. “I was hoping you’d make it.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

  As he followed him past the theatre lobby, he spotted several five-gallon paint buckets and his smile faltered. “Starting to go ahead on some work?”

  “Oh no,” Mr. Richardson replied, turning at the hallway. “No, I’ve just been thinking about colors lately. And some new ideas have come to mind.”

  “Different from the sunset ceiling?”

  “Oh, absolutely not. Well, perhaps. If this new idea works.”

  “But if the bid—” Chip began to say.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” Mr. Richardson said and directed him past several closed doors. “Nothing but a slight change of vision. I have no choice, after all. I’m but a slave to my inspirations.” He tapped his temple with a wink. “I’m sure an artist like yourself knows this only too well.”

  He gave a hearty laugh. Chip mustered a small one.

  “Right in here,” he said, motioning to the one open door. Its brass sign read Conference Room in bold letters.

  Chip took a breath.

  There was an oblong table in the center of the room. Sturdy. Walnut. And filling up the seats surrounding it were seven men he’d come to recognize over the years as representatives of competitive construction companies. Most important among them: his brother Pete and his father.

  Chip had been to enough bid meetings in his life to know the way it was. The competing companies took their seats, and whenever the bidding facilitator was absent, the competition made small talk about the quality of the Styrofoam coffee or how the Abingdon High football team had done the previous Friday. Sometimes, rarely, someone ventured to ask how someone’s son was doing on his Eagle Scout project, or whether someone’s daughter had picked a major in college, but mostly the group pretended they barely knew each other. And at all costs, they avoided talking about the numbers on the papers in their hands.

  “This tastes like Folgers to me.”

  “Impossible. I take my coffee from Zazzy’Z every morning. I’d wager my wife this is Cowboy Up.”

  “Well, I’d take that wager, Bill, except you and I both know—”

  A stiff silence fell as the men looked up at the new arrivals. Subtly, every expression turned from open, to surprised, to a poor attempt at unsurprised. Every expression, that is, but his father’s.

  Chip dipped his head in greeting. “Hello, everyone.”

  “Hello,” they returned. All, again, but his father.

  Chip took a look to the two remaining seats. One next to Mr. Anderson of Anderson Builds. The other beside Pete, who was suddenly busy checking his bid-sheet numbers. Chip moved to the other side of the room and sat down beside Mr. Anderson.

  His father bent to speak into Pete’s ear.

  Chip knew what it meant to walk into this room. He was no longer the competition of his father and brothers in theory, but in reality. Hitherto he had worked the odd job. Bathroom renovation here, eighteen-hundred-square-foot-house flip there. Nothing over a $100,000 credit line, and certainly nothing within the $500,000 range that would put him on his family’s radar.

  Until now.

  “So, let’s get down to it, shall we?” Mr. Richardson said, clapping his hands together. “Mr. Baxter here has stepped up to review your prerequisites for the bid, so if you could please slide your envelopes to him now.”

  Obediently each man gathered the first of two envelopes in his hands and passed it along the row to him. When Mr. Baxter collected them all, he stood and left the room.

  “Now,” Mr. Richardson continued as the door quietly closed. “I’d like to move forward, assuming you each have your subs’ insurance policies and information in line. After all, we’re all chums here, aren’t we?” He smiled in an easy way. “Nobody here has snuck in the back door.” His smile turned into a light chuckle, and he removed his fedora and set it on the table.

  “So, how about we get to it? Go ahead and pass me the envelopes.”

  Without hesitating, Chip slid his down the line. This was not the time for thinking or hesitation. He had stayed up far too many evenings the past several weeks, pushing every cinderblock in his path out of the way for this moment. Moving every heavy stone.

  He was under-resourced in every way. Manpower. Money. Time. Staff. But he’d found a way around every hurdle. Moving subs around. Finding subs who could work within the price range. Finding different subs when it became clear they weren’t licensed and insured. Juggling the sub schedules and needs to fit within the Barter’s tight deadline for renovation. Making sure the subs didn’t overlap when carpet needed to be ripped up just as walls needed to come down. Trying to find a bid number that was low enough to beat his competitors—most with the insider commercial discounts he couldn’t yet reach—yet not low enough to destroy his profit margins—and him.

  It was all hard. It was all a puzzle. It had all, at times, pushed him into dead ends.

  And yet here, today, he had done it.

  “Line item, line item, line item,” Mr. Richardson read, his eyes scanning the sheet in his hand. “Ah. And here we are. The total estimate for Anderson Builds is running at $2,734,860.”

  As Mr. Richardson set the paper on the table in front of him, Chip glanced at several faces. Of course, they were all attempting to gauge everyone’s opinion of the bid. It was high. Quite a bit higher than Chip’s, but then, Anderson Builds estimated so high on these things everyone often wondered aloud why he even ventured.

  One look at each man’s expression gave Chip a few clues about what to expect from the following envelopes. Gilbane Contracting was out of the running; Chip could see it in his defeated expression. Huber was already walking out the door. ACL Construction and Hobbs held their poker faces. But his father and Pete, well, they were doing something he hadn’t seen before. Pete looked cross as he whispered to his father, and from the few hand motions, Chip guessed Pete was trying to convince him to take back the envelope.

  But that didn’t make sense.

  They couldn’t achieve anything by taking it back. They couldn’t write newer, lower numbers to try to secure their bid. That was why the bids were done this way, in person, announced aloud. This method ensured no shady dealings were going on behind closed doors, no undercutting, no wasted hours on complex bids.

  Regardless, whatever Pete’s frustrated expression and terse whispers meant, his father remained stoic and silent, his gaze fixed ahead. Pete might as well be trying to convince a concrete statue.

  “And now for ACL Construction. Let’s see.” Mr. Richardson removed his glasses and squinted at the page. “The total comes to $2,399,000.”

  Raised brows went around the room as he caught the surprised expressions of the others. Two thirty-nine was good. Terribly good. So close Chip felt the ax sweep past him, the rush of wind as it took off the hairs from his forearms.

  Close.

  But not close enough.

  The bids were read for the remaining contractors except Redpoint and McBride and Sons, and all came in too high. Finally, Chip saw Mr. Richa
rdson pick up his envelope. He watched as Mr. Richardson opened the letter and scanned to the bottom.

  A smile crept across the man’s face before he opened his mouth. “And Redpoint Construction has come in with an estimate of $2,350,679.”

  That’s right. Down to the last nine dollars. He had whittled and whittled that number down to the final dollar, and when he thought he couldn’t lower it by fifty cents, he went line item by line item for a place to drop it again.

  Mr. Hobbs whistled and sat back in his chair.

  It was done. Chip’s bid had been read. It blew the others out of the water. Every contractor but his father and brother stared at him, ready to declare it.

  He’d won.

  “Of course, we do have one final bid here,” Mr. Richardson said, reaching for the crisp white envelope. For the briefest moment he gave Chip a look that said for the sake of procedure.

  One glance at Pete confirmed what it would say inside. From head to toe his body was taut, his flexed forearms crossed over each other as he sat like a thirty-eight-year-old CrossFit toddler in the middle of a silent tantrum. Pete had known Chip would be competitive. Pete had known they should’ve done a lower bid. And now, they would lose it. To his little brother.

  “Oh.” Mr. Richardson cleared his throat. “McBride and Sons have put in a bid”—he paused for the briefest glance to Chip—“at $2,199,999. It seems . . . they have won.”

  For several seconds, everyone stared at them.

  Finally, Mr. Anderson broke the silence.

  “You’re joking, Art,” Mr. Anderson said. He waved a hand at the envelope. “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “Unfortunately, we’re not,” Pete said crisply as he stared ahead, his veins on the verge of explosion.

  “You can’t do this job that low,” Mr. Anderson said, staring at Chip’s father. His brows were creasing more by the moment, as though his mind was turning the numbers. “You can’t. Nobody can in this business. How . . .”

  But his words trailed away. The questions How did you do it? and What’s your secret? brewed in the mind of every man at that table. How on earth had McBride and Sons managed to lowball a bid more than $150,000 below his? His? Which was so low he had barely accounted for his own salary? McBride and Sons had an overhead one hundred times greater than Redpoint’s. He had lowered his profit margin to a scrape-the-bottom-of-the-barrel percentage and given up his dream of moving to an office anytime soon. The Barter was going to be the build-his-reputation renovation, the job with his sign proudly staked on Main Street for months declaring, “Redpoint Construction: We Build Your Dreams.” This was going to be the job to get all jobs.

  His name would have been synonymous with the Barter’s.

  Chip’s father pushed himself to standing and extended his hand. “Mr. Richardson. We are looking forward to working with you.”

  It took but a moment for Mr. Richardson to switch his gaze from Chip to his father. “And I as well. Do you know,” he said, clapping the man’s back and turning toward the door. “I just went to visit the Celebrity Stage in Phoenix last weekend, and I had the most marvelous idea about a revolving stage.”

  Chip watched, crestfallen, as his father strolled out of the conference room, guided by the hand of Mr. Richardson.

  “I hope you’re happy.”

  Chip turned to see Pete standing, pushing uneven stacks of papers into his briefcase with jerky movements. Pieces of paper stuck out all over, but Pete snapped his briefcase shut anyway.

  “Me?” Chip said. “What reason on earth would I have to be happy about this, Pete? Tell me. My first big job just flew out of my hands. To you. To Dad.”

  “Yes, and you’re the reason we have this nightmare of a job to contend with at all. Honestly, Chip. You thought you could manage this job for $2.3 million? You’d have sunk the first month.”

  “Wait,” Chip replied, putting a hand up. “Now just wait a second. You don’t want this job?”

  “How could we want this job? Who in their right mind would want this job for 2.1? We’re going to lose so much money we’ll be a hundred in the hole by the time it’s over with. And with all that man’s change orders? He’ll have us bouncing from one foot to the other with all his crackpot, twenty-four-hour ideas.”

  Chip felt like he was hearing his brother’s words from the opposite side of a tunnel. He was hearing everything, but the words were coming slowly. His brother was actually upset that they got the job. His brother hadn’t been trying to take back that envelope to lower the bid, but to pull out. To lose. To lose because his father, for some insane reason, wanted to underbid.

  “But why?” Chip began.

  Pete frowned. Stared into Chip’s eyes. “Why do you think?”

  Without another word, Chip pushed past his brother and out of the conference room. He strode down the plush carpet hallway, following the voices as he went through the lobby and turned into the auditorium. Beside the empty stage in the dimly lit room they stood, his father listening as an enthusiastic Mr. Richardson talked with his hands.

  “May I have a word?” Chip said.

  Mr. Richardson, who was in the middle of circling his hand in the air, stopped.

  Chip’s father hesitated, then spoke. “Mr. Richardson. If you don’t mind.”

  “Take your time, take your time,” said Mr. Richardson, who was now gazing off toward the stage with one finger on his chin like someone in the midst of his biggest breakthrough yet. “Of course . . . ,” he was mumbling to himself as they stepped to the back of the room.

  When Chip’s father finally stopped and turned around, Chip spoke. “I want you to pull out.”

  “No.” His father shook his head. “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Of course you can. The earnest money you’ll lose will be a drop in the bucket—”

  “McBride and Sons does not pull out of jobs they give their word on. It’s a matter of integrity.”

  “No, it’s a matter of stupidity.”

  Chip’s brash words gave him pause, and his father settled his gaze on him. When he spoke, his delivery was slow and methodical. “Son, I have done a lot of stupid things in my line of work. And my life. This is not one of them.”

  Before Chip could open his mouth to speak, he continued. “I am aware of the costs—fiscally and emotionally—for this project, and I have accepted them. What I do not accept, however, is seeing my son”—he paused momentarily—“who is capable of so much, lose everything in one foolhardy move.”

  “Foolhardy. It isn’t foolhardy—”

  “This job would’ve sunk you. You’re bonded at this level, Chip. So what are you going to do if this man doesn’t work with your change-order requests for a project that’s going overbudget out the gate? If you walk away, that red mark will be on your profile forever. No one would ever insure you or loan you money again. So what would you do instead? Lose a hundred grand, two hundred grand, three hundred, whatever it takes to get this project over with. And then tell me, son, how will you ever move on from there?”

  Chip stared at his father, momentarily speechless.

  He knew the job was tight. Extremely tight. And before this meeting, he’d been willing to take the chance. But now, seeing the man fifteen rows ahead staring at the ceiling with new inspiration, seeing the gallons of paint in the café, feeling the sinking confirmation of what was at stake . . .

  Chip shook his head. “I can’t let you do this. Not on account of me.”

  Chip’s father spoke again. “Perhaps you’ll learn this one day, but sometimes, it is a father’s job to take the blow for his child. His enthusiastic, strong-willed, ambitious child who may or may not get his feet tangled up in his dreams on occasion.”

  “Yes, but I’m not a child.”

  His father’s lips turned up slightly, as though Chip had no idea, no earthly idea, what he was saying. His eyes—the same hue and shape as his son’s—softened. His voice came low but strong. “You are always my child. Now if you’ll excu
se me.” He took a step around Chip, clapping a hand on his shoulder as he went.

  Chip watched him go, each step sealing his fate.

  “Oh, and Chip?” As his dad passed the third row of seats, he paused, turned on his heel. “Your mother has requested you bring your cornbread for supper Sunday. Will we be seeing you?”

  His father didn’t want Redpoint Construction to fail and Chip to come running back with his tail between his legs. His father wasn’t trying to pull the rug out from under the competition. In fact, his father didn’t even see him as the competition.

  No, he was just his son.

  Not the disappointing son. Not the last son. Not the disobedient and unyielding son.

  Just . . . his child.

  It came down to that.

  His child.

  For whom he would sacrifice himself if needed.

  Chip felt his chest tighten. Resisted the urge to tug on the tie suddenly constricting his throat. “I’ll be there.”

  His father nodded and resumed his confident walk to his chosen future.

  * * *

  Chip walked out of the Barter into the chilly, sunlit air. It was a funny thing to feel free after losing something he’d worked so hard for.

  He felt as though he had unknowingly been trying to survive underwater for weeks, months, maybe years. As he pushed open those heavy doors, he emerged from the water and, for the first time in ages, could breathe. Real, big oxygen power filled his lungs, giving him life. He looked around and smiled.

  The truth was, he could succeed bit by bit. Moment by moment. Inch by inch. He did, as his father said, have a problem letting his emotions guide his actions sometimes, blinding him to potential consequences. He had just wanted so badly to be successful; he had just wanted so much to prove himself. Now, somehow, even that drive was flittering away as though it were ash cleared by the breeze.

  His cloudy thoughts dissipated. Chip stepped across the pedestrian walkway in the midst of the midday traffic, his feet as light as the bronze fairies’ dancing in the fountain ahead of him.

  Because today, he knew the one thing he wanted, and it was time, at last, to do something about it.