I was looking down at my PJ pants. My head flicks up.
“What about me?”
“He said you two talked about the business after I left. Said you knew more about our operations than he’d ever even heard of.” Dad’s head turns to look at me, and for the first time in my life it’s not my father staring back. He’s looking at me as if I were a peer. “He told me you knew the rough acreage of all of our properties and about the solution Brent came up with to solve the drainage issue at Rycroft Estates. How did you know about that?”
I shrug. He knows how I know because I’ve told him the answer in various forms many, many times. I know because I study. I know because I want this to be my company some day, and in order for that to happen, I can’t see it as rows of pretty houses. I know because I’m interested, because I’m smart, and because I spent the last four years, as I earned my degree, thinking of how any acquired knowledge might apply to Life of Riley.
I know, but Dad has never believed it.
But now, it almost looks as if he’s willing to.
“I pay attention, Dad.”
“He said he’s never met someone who understands long-game strategy so well. He even said that if missing the meeting cost him the promotion … ” He pauses, as if unsure whether to proceed, and I can tell that he’s meant to say this since he came in — once his anger passed, if he could find the guts. “ … that I should give you the vice presidency.”
I don’t know how to respond. Dad watches me, then the serious moment passes, and he smiles a proud father’s smile.
“I’d settle for a seat at your next finance meeting,” I say, turning to the request he’s always, always denied.
“Okay,” he says. “Deal.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Brandon
BECAUSE I HAVE NO BETTER idea of what to do, I show up for work on Monday. There’s no word from Mason one way or the other, but in my imagination I picture a river of ice running through the airspace between his phone and mine.
We left on an indecisive point. I barely remember the conversation. I was just trying to run my mouth in any direction I could imagine, but the encounter felt like a cross between being drunk and being punched. Mason’s marvelous at yelling, especially at those who disappoint him. I’d heard it, and I’d imagined it. I just never figured I’d be one of those people.
Once it was over, I stumbled back to my truck and drove home, growing increasingly annoyed.
I was so weak, there in his office.
In a negotiation, you’re not supposed to make your needs obvious. I hadn’t realized it was a negotiation, after I’d waited for his return, but it was. I was negotiating to keep my job; he was arguing that I should be fired.
And so I basically got down on my knees to lick his shoes.
I talked about how much I respect this company. I even talked about Riley, though maybe that might have been my self-sabotage streak (the same one that makes me drink hard when things get particularly bad) at work. I barely remember what I said. I only remember the tone, and the taste in my mouth that slowly dawned as I drove home, still exhausted, now coming down from adrenaline and shame.
Why should I have to work so hard to keep my job? I had to keep reminding myself: Mason didn’t know what happened between me and Riley, as much as I think I talked about her in that meeting for some reason. So he wouldn’t fire me, would he? I only blew my promotion.
But thinking that mitigating thought just worked me up even more.
I gripped the steering wheel.
I gritted my teeth beneath my lips.
I drove faster than I should have.
How dare he berate me. How dare he make me feel like a slacker, like the other asshole slackers we’ve all heard rumors of the great Mason James taking to school? When we heard about those reprimands, they always made sense. Some guy who never showed up for work. Someone who stole. Someone who harassed coworkers or yelled racist epithets from job sites. Someone with sticky fingers, skimming off the top and thinking the company wouldn’t notice.
And now I’m in with them?
It doesn’t matter that I may have kept my job. I deserve my job. And the promotion.
I’ve always come to work on time. This was literally the only time I’ve ever been late, and it was just a little late, on a weekend. And it wasn’t my fault. I tried to tell that to Mason — about the truck’s failure, hoping Riley didn’t share something similar, with a nonsexual twist, when she got home — but he wasn’t willing to hear a word. I don’t remember everything he said because I was too busy staring at my navel and playing shamefaced, but there was something about how a real man doesn’t make excuses. About how a real man always has contingencies for the things that are important.
But interestingly, I don’t even think he was rebutting my truck defense. It sounded like he didn’t believe me. Like the moment I started to explain, he was waving his hand to waft my bullshit away from his sensitive nose.
Insulting.
Condescending.
By the time I got home, I’d almost decided to quit.
Fuck Mason James. Fuck his company. Let’s see what happens if I quit. Not only will the Stonegate project fall apart; he’ll see how much crap I was holding together. Stuff I wasn’t even responsible for. Stuff I handled because it was wrong and needed to be right, and no one would fix it but me. I should do it just to make him beg. I should stalk off and let everything come crumbling down, then see if his opinion of me changes.
Let’s see what kind of deal he gets on the land he’s considering without my insights. Sure, the survey and zoning specialists nailed their assessments, but there’s one thing I meant to bring up in that meeting as a gotcha that I’m sure nobody’s mentioned: The city is planning to repaint the water tower visible at the east end of the land’s view. Everyone with a north-facing window, looking into the beautiful valley, is about to get an eyeful of garish yellow blight once the paint job is finished. It’s not front and center, but people who pay what Mason wants them to don’t want something like that even in the peripheral vision of their luxury home.
I figure it’ll cost him $10,000 per unit in resale value, on ambiance alone.
Given the planned three hundred or so units, that’s $3 million. If they’re capitalizing the land at 10 percent, which they may or may not be, that’s at least $300K, maybe a half million less that Mason should be paying. And knowing Mason, he’ll get it to at least a million. Everyone knows Life of Riley is staking out the land on the hill near the creek, and if they mysteriously pass, every other developer will think twice.
The financiers won’t hurt as much as the seller, but it’s not exactly a lending boom right now. The banks act like they have all the power, that they’re not willing to lend their precious money and that therefore everyone should beg. But the truth is that banks have to lend or they die, and that it’s them in desperate need — for someone like Mason James, who’s a safe credit risk and willing to assume massive loans.
Let’s see how this deal goes without me.
Let’s see how the Stonegate project would do without me.
Let’s see how any of what I touch at Life of Riley will fare if I walk out, calling Mason’s high-goddamn-handed bluff.
By the time I got home, I was about ready to hit the bar despite the hour. I had women I could call, too, and I almost did. I don’t need any James. None of them. They want to pile atop me, make me feel like crap? They want to tell me I’m useless and unwanted? I’m used to it. I’ve grown immune.