'Tis the Season (3 page)

All he had to do was survive until New Year's Day.

Back in the conference room, the Pep squad were shuffling their collection of posters. Evan hoped they were figuring out which ones were nonessential and dispensing with them. If he sat through this long-winded lecture only to learn that the insoles were manufactured by exploited child laborers, he might just toss one of the representatives through the window. Or both.

“We were discussing the value of Pep Insoles to track performance,” one of them began as Evan, Jennifer and Stuart, the head of marketing, resumed their seats at the table. Evan fiddled with a pencil until Jennifer glared at him. He checked his watch again. He paid halfhearted attention as the Pep folks rambled on in their distinctly unpeppy way. He thought about Tank Moody and wondered whether this time would be better than the last time Champion Sports had hired a professional athlete for a special promotion.

Well, of course it would be better. It couldn't possibly be worse. Who was Tank Moody going to run off with?
Jennifer? Given Tank's modest intellectual gifts, she'd never be interested in him. Heather might, though. As far as Evan could tell, Heather cared more about size than IQ.

Not that Evan had any inside information about Tank's size. But sportscasters were always saying that football was a game of inches.

He grinned, then felt Jennifer's suspicious gaze on him, as palpable as a jab in the ribs. Sobering up, he lifted his eyes to the chart on the easel and struck a rapt pose. The guy had launched into a discourse on the similarities between Pep Insoles and shock absorbers. If Jennifer weren't glaring at him, Evan would have started doodling on his notepad.

After about ten minutes on shock absorption, the Pep Insole people finally pulled out a chart concerning their production facilities, which were located in a suburb of Tegucigalpa, and gave a high-minded explanation of why they'd chosen that location. Cheap labor costs had not been their primary consideration, of course; they'd been eager to create jobs in a region suffering from terrible unemployment. Such a lofty rationale might have brought tears to Evan's eyes if he'd believed it.

“We obey the wage and safety laws of the country and hire no one under the age of fourteen,” one of the Pep boys said, and Evan began to feel a little better. Fourteen was still way too young for a kid to be working full-time, but different countries had different cultures. At least the company wasn't employing eight-year-old kids. A few years ago Evan might not have felt quite so passionate about the issue of child labor, but a few years ago he hadn't had Billy and Gracie. Fatherhood had given him a whole new perspective on things.

Fatherhood had also honed his senses to an unusual degree. His hearing was keen enough to detect the sound of two sets of footsteps on the carpeted hall outside the conference room—Heather's aggressive stride and a syncopated scamper. Gracie was in the building.

“My daughter's here,” he announced, hoping this news would inspire the Georgians to wrap up their presentation.

“Fine. Now here—” Georgian Number Two pulled out another chart, while Georgian Number One continued rambling “—we have a graph illustrating how we've derived the wholesale price for Pep Insoles…”

Annoyed that the men seemed in no hurry to conclude their spiel, Evan rose from his chair. “I'm going to have to let her join us. My secretary can't watch her—she's leaving for the day.” Heather, motivated by that yearend bonus, would probably have been willing to stay an extra fifteen minutes to keep Gracie safely occupied in another room, but Evan thought having Gracie join him in the conference room might accomplish what his hint hadn't: bringing the proceedings to a swift end. Before Jennifer could halt him, he moved around the table, opened the door and peered down the hall. “Gracie? We're in here.”

His daughter popped out of Heather's office and skipped over to him. Her unbuttoned jacket flapped open and her lunch box clattered as the empty thermos rolled around inside it. Her cheeks were pink from the chilly evening air, and her eyes sparkled. She looked, if not spunky, at least a bit more energetic than she had yesterday.

“Hi, Daddy.”

He hunkered down and spread his arms so she could
race into them. Hugging her, he whispered, “I'm stuck in a meeting. Wanna keep me company?”

“Okay.”

He straightened up, reached for her hand and led her into the conference room. She gazed around, her tawny hair tousled, her hazel eyes wary. Stuart was spared a hesitant smile—she recognized him because he usually gave her candy when he saw her, and today was no exception. After digging in his pocket, he pulled out a breath mint. Gracie sprinted around the table and took it. “Thank you.”

“You're welcome, sugar,” he said, chucking her chin. She hated when anyone did that—chucked her chin, pinched her cheek, scruffed her hair—but since he'd just given her a candy, she didn't complain.

Evan resumed his seat and Gracie climbed into his lap. She slammed her lunch box down on the table with a loud clunk, then turned her attention to the Georgians.

They seemed nonplussed by her presence. They stared at her. She stared back. After a moment, they looked away, defeated. Evan's chest swelled with pride at the thought that his young daughter could derail these two gasbags with little more than her dimple-cute face and laser-sharp gaze.

“Well,” one of them finally said, “I believe we've covered everything of importance. Do you have any questions?”

“None at all,” Evan said brightly, restraining himself from boosting Gracie into the air and hooting triumphantly. “I appreciate your having traveled all this way to discuss your product. I'll want to read the literature you brought with you before we make any decisions.”

Next to him, Jennifer bristled but smiled. “I think
we're all very impressed with Pep Insoles,” she said, shooting Evan a lethal look and then regaining her smile for the reps. “We'll be getting back to you very soon.”

“Within the next few weeks,” Evan quickly told them, overruling her. They'd made him sweat out this marathon presentation. He'd let them sweat out his decision about whether his chain of stores was going to carry Pep Insoles.

Gracie slid down from Evan's knees, yanked her lunch box off the table and said, “That was a good meeting, Daddy. I liked it a lot.”

“I'm glad you did,” he said, then winked at Jennifer, who glowered at him and mouthed,
I want to talk to you
. He nodded, then circled the table to shake the reps' hands and feign his utter delight at their having traveled all the way to Arlington, Connecticut, to consume several precious hours of his life. Then he walked out of the conference room with Gracie, abandoning Stuart and Jennifer to perform the closing courtesies.

“We can't leave quite yet,” he warned Gracie as they headed toward his office. “Jennifer wants to talk to me.”

“I don't like her,” Gracie said.

“She works very hard, and she's good for the business.”

“Yeah, but she's a grouch. She never smiles. I like Heather.”

Evan decided not to inform his daughter that Heather hated children. “Was it fun having her pick you up?” he asked.

Gracie trooped into his office ahead of him. “Yeah. Molly said you need to pick me up on time. It's something you have to work on, she said. We did puppets
today. We made them out of socks. Mine came out good, but I left it in school.”

“Great.” As she jabbered on, Evan watched her for signs that she was incubating some sort of ailment. Her color seemed healthy, though, and her energy level high. “Were you tired in school today?”

“Nope.”

“Did you nap?”

“Nope.”

He didn't believe her, but that was all right. He lifted his briefcase onto his desk and snapped open the latch. “Did you eat your whole lunch?” he asked.

“Nope. I gave my cookies to Sarah. I didn't want them.”

Gracie didn't want her cookies? He took that as an ominous sign.

Jennifer appeared in his doorway, the picture of impeccable professionalism in a tailored suit, shiny stockings and those deadly leather pumps. “What is wrong with you?” she asked crossly, her angular face twisted into a frown.

Gracie's appraisal of Jennifer echoed inside his head, making him smile. “Nothing's wrong with me.”

“Those people have an excellent new product.”

“Those people are insufferably boring.”

“Who cares? They're offering us exclusive rights to sell Pep Insoles in southern New England—”

“And we'll probably accept their offer,” Evan said. “But I've got to read all their documents first. And I'll bet the documents will tell me everything that matters. I didn't need these guys schlepping all the way up here to put on their dog-and-pony show for us. If they had to do
it, they should have finished by four o'clock, as promised.”

“They talk slowly,” Jennifer explained.

“I noticed.”

“Don't be such a grouch,” Gracie added. Evan wasn't sure whether she was addressing him or Jennifer. He supposed they were both pretty grouchy at the moment.

“I don't want to discuss Pep Insoles until we've got the Tank Moody promo set up,” he said.

“It's set up,” Jennifer assured him. “Almost.”

“‘Almost' doesn't count. I don't want anything left to chance, okay? Our last big promo using a professional athlete was a disaster.”

Jennifer sighed sympathetically. “This one will go fine. Tank Moody is a gentleman.”

Evan shuddered. “Those guys—” he gestured in the direction of the conference room “—were gentlemen, and spending an afternoon with them was torture. I've got to go. We'll do the Tank stuff tomorrow.”

“Fine.” She handed Evan a thick binder with the Pep Insoles logo on the cover. “You can read this tonight.”

Right
, he thought.
I'm going to ignore my kids and read 150 pages of statistics on shinsplints and hurdlers
. But he only smiled at Jennifer and stuffed the binder into his briefcase. “Okay, Gracie. Let's boogie.”

 

T
HEY PICKED UP
Billy at his friend Scott's house on their way home. Scott's mother had taken Billy to her place after the boys' Cub Scout meeting. She'd come through for Evan more than once this past fall. He was going to have to get her a nice Christmas present. A bottle of well-aged port. And something from the store—a paddleball set or a volleyball net, something the family would enjoy.

Billy was in a subdued mood. “How was Cub Scouts?” Evan asked, glancing at his son in the rearview mirror.

“It was okay.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“How was school?”

“Boring. We had a sub.”

Evan could take a hint. He abandoned all attempts at conversation as he steered around the corner, down the block and up the driveway to his garage.

In the years since Debbie had left, he'd established an effective evening routine. Dinner menus were simple. Evan was a pitifully uncreative cook, but that worked out well because the kids were pitifully unadventurous eaters. They'd eat broiled anything, and he knew how to broil everything. So while they cleaned out their lunch boxes, set the table and emptied a package of salad fixings into a bowl, Evan arranged in a pan what he was going to broil, then broiled it. Yesterday he'd broiled salmon. Tonight it was chicken. Tomorrow it would be lamb chops and the day after, flank steak. If a person was systematic, he could get the job done.

Evan had spent pretty much his entire life mastering that lesson. He'd never been a genius—he had gotten through college on a soccer and baseball scholarship—but he'd wound up earning good grades because he'd figured out systems for studying. It was his flair for systematizing inventory as a summer employee at the Champion Sports store in his hometown of New Haven that had won the attention of the then owner of the two-outlet chain. He'd offered Evan a full-time management job
right out of college, and since Evan was engaged to Debbie, he'd grabbed the opportunity.

He'd set to work systematizing the store's operations. “By turning over inventory three days quicker, we'll make five percent more profit,” he'd explained, and then showed his boss how to do it. “If we track what's selling in each store, we can inventory different products in different stores. We're selling more hockey gear in Arlington than in New Haven. More beach stuff in New Haven. We shouldn't be stocking the identical inventory in both stores.” When his boss suffered a massive heart attack and had to retire, he'd named Evan his successor.

That was nine years ago. Now Champion had seven outlets in Connecticut, two in Rhode Island and one in New Bedford, Massachusetts. No one—least of all Evan—would have predicted that he'd wind up such a success, running a mini-empire by the time he was thirty-one. No one—least of all Evan—would also have predicted that he'd fail so spectacularly in his marriage. He'd thought he'd worked out a system for that, too: listen to Debbie when she wanted to talk, nod when agreement was called for, never complain about the trivial stuff, tune her out when she nagged, make sure she came when they had sex, assure her he loved her…