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“They saw you coming.”
“At least it worked,” Nick continued. “I bought a bottle of peppermint schnapps.”
“I bet that got you in with the cool kids.”
“Not like I’d hoped,” recalled Nick. “I thought it would be better the beer. It sounded fancy and it cost more than beer but it turned out that everyone preferred beer. I ended up getting drunk on my own and watching Road Runner cartoons. And then throwing up. Even today, when I hear ‘Meep, Meep!” I taste minty vomit in my mouth.”
“I’m glad you felt you could share that disgusting memory,” said Zoe wrinkling her nose.
“When did you first manage to get drunk?” asked Nick.
“I worked in the local liquor store,” Zoe pointed across the street. “Just to earn a bit of extra cash in the holidays while I was at business school. Everyone else in my family – well, you’ve already seen – worked in bars and I was determined that wouldn’t be me. So I went with liquor store. Big difference, right?”
“Enormous,” nodded Nick. “What’s wrong with bar work?”
“Nothing,” said Zoe, hastily. “I guess you just don’t want to be what your parents want you to be, or what everyone else in your family already is.” She smiled. “Funny really – I went to business school to get out of bar work, you went into bar work to get out of business. Both rebelling against our parents.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say I went into bar work,” said Nick. “I own a bar and I run a bar. I just work behind it every now and then to help out.”
He noticed that Zoe got a funny look on her face when he said this.
“You don’t enjoy it?” she queried.
“Well… Yeah. I guess. It’s fine. But running it is the real… you know – that’s what I do.”
“Sure.” Zoe nodded, that strange look still on her face. “Any of last night coming back to you yet?”
“Not really. Why?”
“No reason.”
“Did we talk about bar work?”
“We touched on it,” shrugged Zoe.
“Did liquor store work suit you?”
“Up to a point. I didn’t really take to the whole ‘customer service’ thing. Or the liquor store particularly. But I was good at running things when my boss was away. I reorganized the store room so it was more efficient and he could better keep track of inventory, and I showed him a better way of doing his accounts.” There was, Nick noticed, a quiet pride in her voice as she spoke. “I really enjoyed it. And - that stuff… I guess it let me know that I was right to go to business school – that I wasn’t wasting my time and I had actual natural aptitude for that side of things. What was your first job?”
“CEO of RothCo,” Nick sighed.
“I guess everyone’s got to start somewhere.” Zoe shook her head and rolled her eyes. “You weren’t kidding when you said you had it easy.”
“No.” Nick admitted. He shrugged. “I guess had it handed to me on a platter. I reckon my monthly salary could by that whole liquor store.”
“I doubt Mr. Bailey would sell.”
“You know,” Nick continued – it was strange how easy and natural it felt for him to speak about these things to Zoe; he was sure he hadn’t felt this way yesterday, “I’d really like to be able to say that that was my problem. I was promoted beyond my experience. If I had come up through the ranks like a CEO should then I’d have been better prepared and better at the job. No one being given a command role, just like that, out of nowhere, with nothing to back it up, would be able to do a good job. But Adam got the same job at the same time and he’s done a great job. A fantastic job. He’s grown the company enormously. He took to it like a fish to water. I took to it like a fish in a deep fat fryer.”
“I guess different people have different strengths,” said Zoe. “There are probably aspects of bar work that better suit you.”
“Yes, yes of course,” lied Nick. He did not want to tell her that he in fact sucked as a bar owner. It was only behind the bar that he showed any aptitude at all and what did that matter? Anyone could do that. He found himself experiencing the strangest sensation of déjà vu, and again saw that odd look on Zoe’s face. “To each their own.”
They came to the end of Main Street and looked out beyond it to the very appealing wilderness beyond.
“Looks like you could walk across it forever,” said Nick.
“People have tried.”
“Yeah?”
“Seldom goes well.”
They turned and began to walk back along the opposite side of the street, giving Nick a slightly different perspective for the return journey.
“I’ve been thinking about your bar,” Zoe began tentatively.
“Oh yeah?” Nick had been thinking about it too. It was a subject that seldom left his mind these days, festering at the back of it. How long could he prop the place up with his own money and still call it a business? It was little more than an expensive hobby, and an advert for what a total failure he was in every endeavor. All of which meant that it was not a topic that he especially wanted to discuss with Zoe.
“I had a couple of ideas,” Zoe went on.
“Gleaned from your time as a liquor store assistant?”
Zoe shot him a hard look. “Your bar is failing.”
Nick tried not to look shocked. “Nonsense! What would make you think that?” How had she known? “The bar’s doing fine.”
“I do know a little about business,” Zoe said. “And I have a familial bar connection. Bottom line: if anyone is qualified to recognize when a bar is struggling, then it’s me.”
“Nonsense!”
“On the bright side, if anyone is qualified to help it, then that’s also me.” She saw his skeptical look. “If you’ll let me,” she added.
Despite his keenly protected fiction that the bar was doing fine and was not losing money hand over fist, Nick listened as Zoe talked and, after a few minutes, began to listen.
She used words he did not immediately recognize, she rattled off numbers like a calculator with number diarrhea, she spoke in concepts and terms that seemed initially more theoretical than practical, but in the end it all boiled down to one simple thing: I can turn your business around if you will let me.
“It’s all there,” Zoe concluded. “The business is in a good location, it’s got a nice ambience and friendly feel. Everything is right except the business side. Your suppliers are wrong, your marketing is non-existent, you’re carrying brands only fancy people have ever heard of, your promotions suck, your staff rotation is counter-intuitive, I haven’t seen your accounts but I’m guessing they’re not properly managed and you’re getting hosed by your suppliers. All these things seem like nothing when you know
you’re providing a good product, but trust me; they make a difference.”
Nick nodded dumbly, then asked the question that had been bothering him for the last fifteen minutes. “Why are you doing this?”
From the look on Zoe’s face, it was a question that she had not asked herself yet. “I… she fumbled. “I guess… It seemed like you needed it.”
She looked away, unwilling to meet his gaze. Was she uncomfortable? There was a stumble in her walk – more than usual. And Nick found that he had started blushing. What on earth was that about? What was he embarrassed of? He was at his most comfortable around the opposite sex – what was different about now? What was different about Zoe? He could not say – or did not wish to – but something was different about her.
“You’re really…” he struggled to find something to say, some way of thanking her that articulated the emotions he was trying to suppress. “You’re really something.” He finished lamely.
Zoe seemed even more flustered as she wrapped her arms around herself. “Thanks. You’re something too.”
Late that afternoon they would fly back to the city and the following morning, first thing, Nick would resume Zoe’s lessons. But it all seemed oddly futile now. What could he teach her?
Only stuff that she didn’t really need to know.
The lessons ought to be the other way around – she could teach him about good business practice for sure, but also about family, about how to live and to follow your dreams without any caveat. Without making am almighty mess of everything you touched. Nick being her teacher just seemed faintly ridiculous now.
But there was still the bet to consider.
For Nick to win that, Zoe had to pass herself off as Vanessa Reese and for that there were still things that she needed to learn, however useless those things might be in the big picture. Making Zoe more like Vanessa had previously struck Nick as difficult (if not downright impossible), now it struck him as an actively hateful and destructive process. Why would he want to change someone as wonderful as Zoe?
But it was just temporary, he reassured himself.
