I started the car. Alex looked at me.
“Where are we going?”
“To the restaurant. You can sit at one of the empty tables and do your homework.”
For a moment, I thought he was going to argue with me, but then his expression softened and he buckled his seat belt. I pulled out of my parking spot.
“Hey, Monica? I know that Mrs. Lott is making me write you that letter, but I really am sorry.”
“Good. Apology accepted. And since I know you really mean it, after you finish your homework you can keep on being sorry by doing dishes at the restaurant. The pay is five bucks an hour. So, it’ll only take six hours for you to pay me back for all that oregano you stole.”
“Oh, man! That is so—” Alex let out an exasperated growl and slumped in his seat. “Fine. Whatever. I guess I owe it to you.”
“Yes, you do,” I said, shooting him a look before turning right out of the lot. “Also, I’m confiscating your cell phone for the next two weeks.”
“What!” Alex cried, his eyes practically popping out of his head. “You can’t do that! It’s so unfair! How will I—”
“And after you’ve paid me back,” I said, raising my voice and talking right over him, “assuming I think you’re worth the salary, you can keep the job for the rest of your suspension.”
Alex, suddenly quiet, stared at me.
“Well, there’s no point in having you sit around my kitchen taking up space all day, is there? Might as well make yourself useful. Now, let’s see—when do you go back to school? February thirteenth, isn’t it? Right before Valentine’s Day. You ought to be able to make some pretty serious coin by then—maybe sixty or seventy bucks.”
I looked over to the passenger seat.
“That’s about the same price as a dozen roses, isn’t it?”
Chapter 12
Grace
Ten minutes after my conversation with Ava, I stood in the hallway, staring at Gavin Nutting’s office door. A pounding sound was coming from inside. I tried to think of things that might make me indispensable. None came to mind. I took a deep breath and knocked.
“Enter!”
I poked my head inside. “Mr. Nutting? Can I speak with you for a minute?”
Gavin was wasting no time settling into his new office. Along with a couple of award plaques, he’d already hung several framed motivational posters on the walls, the sort you see for sale in the back of business magazines, with high-resolution photos of redwood forests, eagles in flight, sailboats on stormy seas, and the like. Beneath each picture were urgent, single-word captions that screamed . . .
ATTITUDE!
EXCELLENCE!
FOCUS!
COMMITMENT!
TEAMWORK!
“Have a seat,” he said.
While Gavin put down his hammer and rolled down his shirtsleeves, I continued looking over his new office.
He had a personal coffeemaker on his credenza, the kind with plastic pods. Though he wore a wedding band, there were no signs of a wife or kids in his desk photos. Instead, each of the very professional-looking pictures showed him engaged in some sort of athletic pursuit—skiing, surfing, golfing, etc.—and looking so good doing it that I wondered if they’d been staged. There wasn’t a single candid-looking snapshot in the bunch, nothing that made him look goofy, or happy, or even particularly human. I’d never seen a desk gallery quite like it.
Still, I wasn’t so much concerned with Gavin’s office décor as I was with reminding him of why I very much wanted and needed to keep my job. I needed to convince him that I was indispensable, but also figured it couldn’t hurt to remind him that I was a woman in dire straits, just in case he turned out to have a hidden streak of compassion. You can’t judge a book by its cover, right?
Except, in this case, you could....
When I finished, Gavin stared at me across his desk, laced his fingers together, and tapped his thumbs. “Yes, I understand that your personal situation is difficult. But as I said before in the meeting, I’m not planning on making any immediate changes. Now, what can I do for you, Grace?”
Allowing for variations in vocal tone and inflection, there are about ten different ways to ask that exact question. Probably nine of them are kindly meant. Gavin Nutting asked the tenth way, making two things crystal clear: first, that he didn’t give a rat’s rear end about my personal problems; and second, that I was one of the first people he planned to fire.
How could I change his mind? What would somebody indispensable say in these circumstances?
“Mr. Nutting, I’m not stupid. ‘No plans for immediate change’ just means that you’re not going to fire me this week. Next week could be a different story. And, obviously, my personal situation is just that—personal. You have a company to run. That is your first, your only priority. And my problems are mine, not yours. And certainly not Spector’s. But I . . . what I mean is . . .”
His unwavering stare shook what little confidence I had, made me lose my train of thought. My mind was racing, trying to come up with some way to convince him of my value, but I kept coming up empty. And then, hanging just above his head, I saw the posters and the captions beneath, bold as billboards.
“What you may not have considered is that my personal problems make me a highly motivated and focused employee who is eager to learn and willing to work hard. Somebody with an exceptional attitude and commitment to excellence.”
I leaned
