“Sorry,” she says, sitting more upright suddenly. “I forgot you are you. This is like doing advanced calculus with a kindergartener. I’m good; forget I brought it up.”
“You’re really going to let me off the hook like that?” I ask, eyeing her doubtfully.
“You don’t know what to say in these moments. I totally get it.”
“I know what to say.” The damn part of my ego that hates to be one-upped or wrong rears its head. “You want to hear that everything is going to be all right. You want me to stroke your hair and let you know no matter what happens with your dad he’ll be fine because he has your love.”
She looks at me with wide-eyed astonishment. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
“I’m smart enough to know what women want to hear, but wise enough to know it’s counterproductive to be the one to say it to them. There are plenty of guys out there willing to do that junk even when it means getting walked all over. It’s bad advice anyway. Your dad needs a plan. Let me look at his business this morning. I’m sure I can get him on the right track pretty fast.”
“You don’t need to do that.” Her cheeks turn pink. “I know you’ve been working very hard trying not to be nice. I don’t want to ruin that for you.”
Damn, even her insults make me smile. “I’m no one’s hero, and I’m no one’s sucker. That doesn’t mean I have to be an asshole all the time.”
“You’re not as bad as you think you are,” she says, that wash of unwanted sympathy coming my way again. “I wish you could see that.”
“Don’t waste your time.” I shrug, not wavering a bit. “I’m exactly the right amount of nice that people deserve. It doesn’t matter, though. Nice. Cruel. People stick around for precisely as long as it is beneficial for them to do so.”
“So it’s not really that you want to be alone,” Penny says, pointing an accusing finger at me as though she’s yanked free one of my many layers. “You’re worried about them leaving, so you make sure you’re the first one to go. Not everyone leaves though, Dalton. Some of us stick around.”
“Easy, Tiger.” She may be quick to suspend reality, but I’m not. “This is a temporary living situation until your sister comes back to town. You’ll soon be gone.” As soon as the words are out of my mouth I regret them, not because they’re not true, but because I realize I don’t want them to be.
“We don’t have to be neighbors for me to care about you. You don’t have to push me away.”
“No?” I ask, feeling an unfamiliar prickly sensation roll up my spine. I feel I’m being outplayed in a game of chess. Any minute she’s going to call checkmate on me.
“All I’m saying is that no one can prove your theory wrong if you don’t give them a chance to.”
I slide a hand beneath her long hair and rest it on the warm skin of her neck. Her optimism pulls at my jaded side. I could make my case about how humanity at its core has always been self-serving. I could reference how quickly kindness and civility falls away during times of supply shortages—due to natural disasters or the economy. I don’t want to. I like that she doesn’t see the world as I do. I hope no one ever takes the sparkle from her eyes. “Everything with your dad is going to be all right,” I say with forced positivity. Yeah, I’m falling fast. “It’ll all be fine.”
“You’re a terrible actor,” she groans but leans into my touch. “I can tell you’re faking.”
Changing gears, I shoot her my sexiest smile. “I can promise, of the two of us, you’ll never have to fake anything.” I lean closer to her.
She flushes but checks her watch as though she’s clocking a race. “Nine minutes. You went nine minutes without referencing sex. That’s a big deal.”
“I’ll show you a big deal,” I say, waggling my eyebrows as I point at my rock-hard cock.
Her gaze drops to my groin. If she was wondering where my thoughts were wandering to while we’ve been talking, the evidence is right there for her to see.
Her eyes whip back to mine, and I realize I’m holding my breath. There’s a seriousness to her that makes me wish I could take my crude joke back. She’s better than that.
She opens her mouth, and I can see the yes forming on her lips. My brain starts to scramble. If she gives me the green light, fuck work.
“Would you really come with me to see my father?” she asks, and I do a mental double take.
It’s a boner killer, but I’m oddly not disappointed.
My answer is the same. I take out my phone and clear my morning meetings.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dalton
On the way to her father’s place, Penny looks more and more uncomfortable. “My dad is really weird.” I’m surprised she’s so concerned what I’ll think of him. “Like really quirky. Most people don’t get his humor. I’m just warning you now.”
“I’ve been warned,” I say flatly, not worried at all about it. I can deal with anyone. I have a hard time, though, believing the man who raised Penny is all that bad.
“He’s a good man who was shaped by a very hard thing that happened.”
“What happened?”
“His sister, Julie, died of cancer when she was in her early thirties. I’m sad to say I hardly remember her. But the parts I do remember shine in my mind.”
“Your dad was close with her?”
“They were best friends. Before she got sick she was living her life to the fullest. Every second. She would get a job, then quit it every summer so she could spend time with her kids. Julie was the last person in the world whose life should have been cut short. There were a million things she’d have accomplished if she had lived. When I’m feeling off-center I take flowers to her grave and talk until I find my way.”
I nod as though that makes sense to me, but the idea of talking to a headstone to make myself feel better seems strange. So instead I just wait for her to go on.
“My father was devastated. Her passing sent him into overdrive. It was no longer about money. Success meant minutes spent doing something that put good energy into the universe. My mother was already leaning the other way. She was climbing the corporate ladder. She was making more money than he was. It ended up being enough to split them up. My mother was the last thread holding my father to social norms.”
“She left him for being a philanthropist?”
“No.” She turns to look out the window. “She left him because he took all their savings and bought goats for a village in Africa. He sold off their furniture and turned the proceeds into a makeshift food pantry for the poor in our tool shed.”
“Damn.”
“When I was little, I thought my dad was a saint and my mother was a demon. Didn’t she want to feed the poor? Didn’t she care about her fellow men? What I realized as I got older was my mother wasn’t a monster, she just wanted to make sure we were taken care of too. But I’m gushing now. I just wanted you to have some context. My father is a good man. He just misses his sister and wants to honor the life she didn’t get to have. I don’t want you to be blindsided.”
“I’m good, Penny. I deal with people all day. Business is business. Don’t stress about it.”
“Oh, and my father is king of dad jokes. Don’t ever tell him you’re hungry. He can’t help himself, he’ll say ‘Hi, Hungry. I’m Ziggy.’”
“Your dad’s name is Ziggy?”
“No.” She turns back with a groan. “But that’s what he goes by. You’ll see. I can’t really prepare you any more. You’ll have to see it for yourself.”
“Get off my property, you crazy kids,” a man with straggly long hair and a tie-dye bandana says. He’s missing a few teeth and has a couple extra earrings lining his ears. His whiskers are long and unkempt, but his eyes beam as bright as Penny’s.
“That joke never gets old, Dad,” Penny says like an annoyed teenager. That melts away when he opens his arms wide to her, and they hug as though they haven’t seen each other in years. I know she was just here, so it makes me wonder if they do th
is every time. I haven’t hugged my father since I was old enough to know I didn’t want to.
“Who is this dapper gentleman?” Ziggy asks, slapping his leathery hands against my shoulder. “Man, feel that material.” He’s pinching at the sleeve of my suit and making an impressed-looking face at Penny. “You need a job?”
“No, sir,” I answer flatly. “My name is Dalton Croft I’m a frie—” The word catches in my throat just in time. “I know Penny. She mentioned you were having some trouble, and I offered to help. I’ve been running my own business for a decade. It’s become one of the largest companies in its field. I’m sure I could give you some tips.”
A look passes between Penny and Ziggy that I can’t read. I do understand it’s not undying gratitude.
“It’s worth a shot, Dad,” Penny says, looping her arm in his and walking into the small cement building. It was, at one time, painted white, but now it’s mostly gray cinder block with chipped paint. The windows are small and cracked. If there wasn’t a sign on the door that said Ziggy’s Employment Emporium I would think we were walking into a condemned, forgotten building.
“Welcome, Dalton,” Ziggy says, puffing his chest out with pride as he gestures around the room. The drop ceiling tiles are splotched with water spots from various old leaks, and the desk in the corner is propped up on one side with some old cinder blocks where a leg is missing. He gestures for Penny and me to sit in the two chairs facing his desk.
Ziggy is already digging out a shoe box from under the desk before my ass hits the seat.
“I do appreciate your offer, Dalton, but as I told Penny, I think we’ve finally met our match. The government is crushing small businesses like this all day long.”
I’m no fan of the IRS, but there are plenty of loopholes a small business can take advantage of if you’re savvy. “What’s the basic business model you use?”
“Well,” Ziggy says, leaning way back in his chair and folding his beat-up hands behind his head. “I have been in business for the last thirty years. People need a job, they are down on their luck, and I help them.”
“And they pay you a flat fee?”
“No, no,” Ziggy says, as though I’m nuts. “They come here and they don’t have a job. So how could they pay me?”
“So how do you make money?”
I can see Penny squirming in her chair. She clearly already knows the answer to this question.
Ziggy leans forward as though he’s going to let me in on a massive secret. “If I can help get them a job, they pay me. And before you ask, it’s a matter of how much they make at their job and how much they need to live off that determines how much they pay me.”
“Hmm,” is all I can manage as the picture becomes clear. It’s not a matter of how to keep Ziggy in business; I’m now interested in knowing how the hell he’s been able to keep it together this long.
“My father offers so many services,” Penny says. “It’s more than finding a job for people. He helps them improve their skills for interviewing, makes sure they have proper clothes. He tries to understand what their schedules will allow and how they can get their kids to and from school while they work. He looks at their entire situation.”
“Logistics.” I nod, trying to keep my head in the game. “So that’s a need of your clientele. That makes sense.”
“My clientele.” Ziggy chuckles loudly. “They’re friends. Every one of them.” He pulls open six drawers of a tall filing cabinet next to him. “I’ve had over four thousand satisfied customers. A very high percentage keep their jobs for years.”
“Four thousand?” I ask, wondering what kind of contact information he’s kept in those filing cabinets. “How do you advertise?”
“Word of mouth.” Ziggy shrugs. “I get a guy a job at the local plant and then his cousin comes in. The cousin tells his best friend. Plus, the employers in the area know I’m sending them people who are doing the best they can to get hired. I sometimes get calls before a job gets listed anywhere. They know I’m supporting the people who hire me to make sure they are successful. Here.” Ziggy pulls a file from the cabinet and opens it for me to see. “This is Renee. She has three children. She’s a single parent. Her skills were pretty minimal, but she’d been doing hair for all her friends for decades. I helped her get her license and found her a salon that would give her a shot. She had as much skill as anyone but without that piece of paper she couldn’t get on the books. I invested in her schooling, and she has worked a flexible schedule doing what she loves for years now. I think she sent me at least five or six other customers.”
“You paid for her to go to school?”
“I invested in her.” He nods. “Penny watched the kids for her when other child care fell through.” The pride on his face is powerful as he glances at his daughter.
“How much did she pay you?”
“She cuts my hair for free,” he says, whipping his long hair off his shoulder. “Plus her oldest boy cuts the grass here. Also free. I know you’re a successful guy; are you familiar with bartering?”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“See this?” he asks, opening his drawer.
“Oh Dad, don’t,” Penny begs, covering her face with her hands.
“This is a real genuine prosthetic arm dating back to the turn of the century.” He takes the rusted metal skeletal contraption and reaches across the desk in my direction. “Give it a good look. I call him stretch. The kids think it’s a hoot.”
I reluctantly take the creepy looking thing and wonder if this could get any more bizarre.
“Art McDonald gave me that after I got him a job on a construction crew. It’s worth a pretty penny I think. I’ve been meaning to have it appraised.”
“I uh . . .” Rarely at loss for words, I glance around the rest of the office and see the mix of things that must have been given to him as payment over the years. What the hell did I get myself into? Note to self, next time Penny warns me? Listen.
“I imagine you’re a lot like my daughter Kylie,” Ziggy says. “You would tell me my business is a gold mine. A great success rate. Loyal customers. A network of employers who trust me. All I need to do is move the office closer to the city, charge a flat up-front fee, market my services on one of the online platforms that have popped up for recruiters over the years, standardize the prices for my other services, and stop paying for people to get a new outfit for interviews. Stop helping them get their GED. Don’t spend all my time trying to work out their lives for them. Just find them jobs and collect the money. Then I could pay the back taxes and the extra mortgage I took out on this place. If I brought my business into the twenty-first century, I could be back in the black in no time. Actually I could probably turn my brand into a franchise down the road.”
Not expecting his concise and well-thought-out plan, I hurry to a response. “That would all make a lot of sense. If you proposed that plan to the bank, I’m sure they’d support it. You’d just need to turn those old files and records into some summarized statistics.”
“How much was that suit?” Ziggy asks me as though we hadn’t been talking about something else. I don’t intend to tell him, but he keeps staring at the fabric, waiting.
“It’s a good quality suit.” I shrug.
“This sweater vest,” he says, tugging on his handmade brown shirt. “I got it for a buck at the Goodwill. Someone was done with it, and I needed it. I’ll get a lot of life out of it, then maybe even send it back to Goodwill. Well if I don’t drop a meatball on it or anything.” He stops speaking as though he’s made a point, but if he did, it’s lost on me. My silence gets him talking again.
“There is life left in this building, and there are people who need me right where I am. A flat rate will mean most of the people I helped before wouldn’t have been able to come here at all. All I want to do is keep helping people as I always have and not lose the little I get for it. Can you help with that?”
I’m a prisoner to blunt honesty when it comes to busi
ness. Sugarcoating isn’t on my résumé. “I’m not sure what you have here is sustainable. I can look at the numbers and maybe move some things around a bit, but if you’re not going to charge people more than it costs to run the business, then no one can do anything to help you. Math is a finite thing. This either adds up or it doesn’t.”
“Then it’s settled,” Ziggy says with a big smile as he slaps his hands together. “This business meeting is over, and we can shift gears to a social visit. Now, can I get you something to drink?”
I need a fucking drink. Something strong and straight, because my head is spinning. I didn’t know people like this even existed anymore.
Penny’s nervous voice cuts off my thoughts. “But what are you going to do then, Dad? You have a couple days before the bank is going to put a sign on that door and kick you out. If you won’t ask Kylie for money, and you won’t make any changes, there is no hope.”
“No hope,” Ziggy says, looking disappointed in her. “Penny Pot, that is something I never expected to hear from my girl. You and I, we do what we love and we let the cosmos work out the details. If your heart is in the right place, everything else will be fine.”
“But—”
“No buts, no nuts, no coconuts,” Ziggy says with a hardy laugh. “It’ll all work out somehow. I do really appreciate your time, Dalton. It was kind of you to come down here. It warms my heart to know Penny has such wonderful friends.”
Friends. There’s that damn word again. I can see where she gets it. Ziggy has been wildly misinformed. Life does not just happen to you. You have to make things happen. But if he’s not willing to change anything, there really isn’t anything I can do to help. I usually chuck that in the fuck-it bucket—not my problem. But the ache in Penny’s voice is reverberating around in my head.